McDonald’s Growth and Productivity Strategy, McDonald’s > NEXT, Takes Shape in Ireland with Hand-Breaded Chicken Pilot

McDonald’s Growth and Productivity Strategy, McDonald’s > NEXT, Takes Shape in Ireland with Hand-Breaded Chicken Pilot

McDonald’s UK & Ireland today announced an operational pilot for hand-breaded chicken across select Dublin locations from mid-October until February.  

The new preparation method is a tangible demonstration of food prepared with care: a process designed to deliver crunch, texture, and juiciness – undeniable attributes of the great tasting, great quality menu items customers crave. The pilot will test both the product and execution, evaluating how restaurants can deliver each menu item consistently at scale while keeping kitchen complexity to a minimum. 

This pilot informs McDonald’s > NEXT, the company’s new growth and productivity strategy; specifically, how elevating taste and quality through innovation and great execution can drive demand and help make McDonald’s the first choice for more customers, more often.  

Chicken is a significant growth opportunity for the business, representing a category worth nearly $130 billion across McDonald's top 10 markets. In Ireland specifically, chicken represents a significant growth opportunity for the brand, and the country's chicken leadership, operational expertise and strong customer demand make it an ideal market to introduce hand-breaded chicken to Europe and learn how to bring it to more customers.   

Hand-breading has already proven to be a significant opportunity to upgrade taste and quality across more than 10,000 McDonald's restaurants in Asia, where it has helped the brand become a market leader for great-tasting chicken and grow both sales and share.  

Building on learnings from these international markets, McDonald's has also been piloting the concept in restaurants near the Company’s headquarters in the United States, where customer feedback has been strong, with double-digit increases in chicken taste and quality scores. 

Ireland will now play a key role in informing the next phase of McDonald's hand-breaded chicken journey. The operational pilot will test restaurants' ability to deliver consistent, great-tasting, high-quality hand-breaded chicken menu offerings with minimal complexity and disruption in the kitchen, generating valuable customer and operational learnings that could help inform future menu innovation across the wider McDonald's system.  

The pilot is an example of how McDonald's uses its global scale and local market insights to identify growth opportunities, test them rigorously in real restaurants and build the capabilities required to deliver them consistently. 

Tim Kenward, Chief Marketing Officer, McDonald’s UK & Ireland, said: "This is about much more than introducing a new way of preparing chicken. We’re piloting how our restaurants can consistently deliver the taste, quality and visible care that customers increasingly expect, without adding unnecessary complexity for our teams. Ireland’s strength in chicken makes it the ideal market to help us understand what it takes to deliver this at scale and support our ambition to become the first choice for more customers, more often." 

During the pilot, customers will be able to enjoy hand-breaded versions of existing favourites, including McCrispy products, the Tikka, Sweet Chilli and BBQ wraps, the Snack Wrap, and McCrispy Strips. In February, McDonald’s plans to begin a pilot with advertising support in Ireland.  

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For more information, contact the McDonald’s press office on 00 44 203 897 0333 or mcdteam@consello.com