McDonald’s Snack Wrap will return to a very different restaurant world from the one it left nine years ago.
The fast-food giant officially announced the return of the chicken-centric wrap sandwich to the menu on Tuesday. McDonald’s restaurants will officially start selling the wraps on July 10, though some locations will undoubtedly sell it before then.
McDonald’s has been broadcasting the return for months. Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said so publicly late last year. The introduction of McCrispy Strips last month effectively paved the way for the wrap’s return, because McDonald’s preferred to use chicken fingers as the basis for the wrap, largely for operational purposes.
The Snack Wraps’ comeback to the menu is largely the product of consumer demand. The product was phased out of McDonald’s menus in 2016, as the Chicago-based company sought to make operational improvements.
But consumers, driven by social media and the availability of online petitions and other forms of communication, have demanded to bring it back. “I hope you’re not playing with our emotions because I swear to god the people of the U.S. will riot if you pull the rug from underneath us,” a customer named “Nate” wrote in an email to McDonald’s.
The company highlighted all these in its announcement on Tuesday, going so far as to have Erlinger read customers’ social posts asking for the Snack Wrap on a video.
Image courtesy of McDonald's.
It’s the latest product to make a return to a fast-food chain’s menu years after its removal. In 2022, for instance, Taco Bell brought back the Mexican Pizza after customers demanded its return two years after it was removed from the menu. That helped create all kinds of demand for a product that had been one of Taco Bell’s weakest selling items, helping sales at the chain to skyrocket.
McDonald’s is hoping for something similar here. The company’s sales have been sluggish, at best, for the past 18 months as consumers have cut back on dining. Its first-quarter same-store sales were the worst for the chain since the pandemic.
The company is using a combination of value, marketing promotions, longer hours and new products such as McCrispy Strips and the Snack Wraps.
The wraps are interestingly coming back in July, after the start of McDonald’s third quarter, which will give the company its second major permanent new menu item in as many periods—after not introducing a new menu item since 2021.
The company is hoping that the Snack Wrap will lift sales just after whatever lift it gets from the McCrispy Strips wears off, which will satisfy Wall Street’s hunger for improved results. The company also received a big lift, apparently, from its Minecraft Movie Happy Meal.
Image courtesy of McDonald's.
In some respects, McDonald’s is in a similar position to the one it was in 2016 when the chain pulled the wraps from its menu. But the market itself is very different.
At the time, the fast-food giant was working to pull its sales out of a brutal sales slump. The company pulled the wraps in part to make room for an expansion of All Day Breakfast, which itself was brought about because consumers demanded it, and McDonald’s wanted some short-term sales wins.
All Day Breakfast worked to lift sales and helped ignite a nine-year run of strong sales. But that menu was removed when the pandemic hit in 2020, and it appears to be gone for good.
This time, consumers are demanding a lot more chicken. And apparently they want it in wrap form. Several restaurant chains, including Burger King and its sister chain Popeyes more recently, have introduced wraps of their own, hoping to steal some of McDonald’s wrap customers.
The rapid growth of fast-casual chicken chains like Raising Cane’s, Wingstop and Dave’s Hot Chicken has also accentuated consumer demand for poultry. McDonald’s itself has helped fuel that. The chain now sells just as much chicken as it does beef.
McDonald’s might have missed an opportunity to build chicken sales at an earlier point by removing the Snack Wrap in the first place. But the chain will at least see whether consumers will keep ordering the product after it returns.
Image courtesy of McDonald's.
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