McDonalds prepares test of hand-breaded chicken tenders, sandwiches at 200 spots

McDonald’s is preparing to test hand-breaded chicken menu items in nearly 200 restaurants across the US and Ireland next year, its latest attempt to win back inflation-battered consumers.The world’s largest fast-food chain has already been selling hand-breaded chicken nuggets, strips and sandwiches across a handful of stores in the Chicago area, as well as 10,000 locations across Asia. It’s part of McDonald’s plan to snatch market share from competitors like Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s, both of which hand-batter and -bread chicken daily in restaurants around the country. Hand-breaded chicken items are “a significant opportunity to upgrade taste and quality,” executive vice president Jill McDonald said during the company’s investor presentation last week.But it can be difficult to add fresh breaded chicken to a chain like McDonald’s, whose customers have come to expect speedy service behind the counter, as Bloomberg previously reported.The fresh food requires new equipment, additional workstations and a more complex cooking process.McDonald’s last week unveiled a multi-year, $8.5 billion spending plan that included a focus on chicken products, as consumers have shunned rising beef prices.

The chain aims to gain 1.5 percentage points of market share in chicken products by 2030.One of the main challenges will be finding room for new equipment in McDonald’s restaurants.The chicken will arrive at restaurants raw, marinated and frozen, so locations will need to add thawing cabinets.Restaurants also need to add a separate work station for employees to batter and bread the chicken, which will then be sent off to the fryers. Currently, McDonald’s nuggets arrive at stores breaded, frozen and partially cooked – so all workers need to do is drop the morsels of poultry goodness in a deep fryer and then toss them in cartons.It takes not only more space, but more time to hand-bread chicken, too. Workers who handle raw chicken won’t be able to h...