The McRib Mystery
I first met McDonalds in 1961 in Madison, Wisconsin, where they had been present since 1957. There were only 150 McDonalds outlets then and they were mostly in the Midwest given Ray Kroc’s home in the suburbs of Chicago. Of course, as most of us know, the franchise actual began in San Bernardino, California where the McDonald brothers first set up shop. I distinctly remember going to McDonalds with my mother and sisters in our old 1956 teal and white Oldsmobile. It struck me as strange that this was neither an eat-in restaurant (my reference was Shakeys) or a drive-in like A&W. This was a place where you drove up and went into a strange-looking store with big yellow arches over it and ordered your food (hamburgers were $0.15 and cheeseburgers were $0.19 as I recall) and the only other things to get were french fries ($0.10), for which the franchise was famous (hence the Golden Arches) and a shake ($0.20…strawberry being my shake of choice). We used to get two burgers (they were very small, even then), so a full meal was about $0.68 if we went crazy and got cheeseburgers. There was little else on the menu and everything came in one size. There were no Happy Meals and certainly no Super-Sizing. But it sure was good to us as kids (my mother was much less impressed) and we saw it as a real treat to get taken to McDonalds for a special occasion meal. Given that my mother’s work load in grad school made the Swanson TV dinners ($0.59) the primary alternative meals during those days, its less difficult to understand why we loved McDonalds.
McDonalds was growing like crazy in the 1960s and someone at HQ decided it was necessary to expand the menu. The Big Mac was introduced in 1967 (who doesn’t remember “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun!”)? Then in 1971 came the ubiquitous quarter-pounder (with and without cheese) to counter the old joke about the woman who complains about there not being a burger on her hamburger, only to get told to look under the pickle. That was the era where McDonalds decided that size mattered. But things took at different direction in Oak Brook HQ by 1979 when McDonalds was under attack on one side by Burger King and Wendy’s and by Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken on the other. It caused McDonald’s executive chef to invent that icon of American youth, the Chicken McNuggets. By then, branding was a big deal and McEverything was the order of the day.
In 1981 in the heartland of the country, specifically in Kansas City, a major hog butchering locale, that same executive chef launched a short term experiment by introducing a sandwich based on Barbecued Ribs. Naturally, they had to remove the bones, just as they had with the McNuggets, and they had to call it the McRib Sandwich. The sandwich was only a modest seller, maybe because it may have weirded out consumers since in was fashioned to look like a slab of ribs, but without the ribs. I suspect American consumers didn’t like being reminded that their favorite foods actually came from real animals, or maybe the whole pork thing was a turn-off. And later it was revealed that it was introduced due to a chicken shortage. But McDonalds prides itself in having uniformity across all of its restaurants and pork ribs are simply not as ubiquitously liked or available around the country as they may be in the Midwest. Based on decent sales in the Midwest, McDonalds rolled out the sandwich nationally, only to find that it was not such a big seller. They pulled it off the menu in 1985.
For the last 38 years, McDonalds has had a bad case of McRib Schizophrenia. Every few years in one global location or another, they reintroduce the McRib, usually for a limited run. It is a permanent part of the menu in certain foreign locations like Germany, which apparently loves the McRib, but in the U.S. it is far more a hit or miss situation. Over the last thirty years, McDonalds has literally promoted a McRib Farewell Tour four times…and yet, the sandwich just keeps coming back when least expected. The most recent end of the line for the McRib came in 2022, only to have McDonalds announce without shame that it would again be offered for a limited time only in the fall of 2023.
Marketing gurus say that fast food restaurants benefit from offering special limited-time offerings and especially so if the item is well-known. The McRib seems to fit that bill perfectly. While pork is a controversial meat, Americans eat 51 pounds of it per capita per year. That compares to 97 pounds for chicken and 57 pounds for beef. The very first menu item added to the hamburgers back in 1965 was the Filet-O-Fish Sandwich (shoulda been the McFish), and still today Americans eat only about 20 pounds of fish of any kind per capita per annum. Come to think of it, 1965 was a very big time for fish sticks, that had grown into a kids’ mainstay since they were first introduced in 1953. Nevertheless, pork seems to be a big enough menu item for Americans that I will bet McDonalds continues to roll it out regularly whenever they want to stir up some interest.
Today’s array of fast food joints puts McDonalds back into a very big pack with Arby’s, Burger King, In-and-Out Burger (a lot like the original McDonalds), Jack-in-the-Box, Carl’s Jr., Habit, Chick-Fil-A, Panda Express and many others. These days I tend to favor Jack’s and Arby’s over the others, but when I start to see or hear the McRib ads, something in my taste buds tells me I need a McRib again. That happened last week when I stopped at McDonalds with Kim and her nephew Josh and had to buy a McRib. No one else bought anything, but both Kim and Josh were happy to finish off my McRib, which is much bigger than I remember it. And then again today, I specifically had a hankering for a McRib Sandwich so I stopped at McDonalds again. I had a moment of angst when I didn’t see it on the drive-through menu, thinking that I had missed it. But I was in luck and McDonalds has kept it on offer long enough for me to have this second bite at the apple.
I kinda think that having two McRibs this season is sort of in the category of enough until the next time the marketing wizards at McDonalds decide to re-release the McRib with some fanfare for the next Farewell Tour. I spent some time contemplating the sandwich this time rather than just gulping it down. It really is a very special sandwich with a very special taste. The bun is oblong and seeded. Like a Cuban Sandwich, it comes with raw onions and pickles (both of which I had them take off of mine) and some very sweet and spicy barbecue sauce. The meat patties still looks like there are ribs in there and the meat is very nicely devoid of gristle or excessive fat like you might find in real ribs. The sandwich eats well on the run so long as the sauce is not on too thick. Overall, I give the McRib an A for the limited time that its available. I’m not sure I will miss it when its gone, but I assure you that I will want it next year when I hear them advertise its temporary return once again. Therein lies the mystery of the McRib, you want it a lot, but not so much or so often.