McDonald's had high hopes for its signature plant-based burger when it launched it in California and Texas two years ago, but it turns out customers just didn't love it.
Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald's USA, said during this week's Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum that the meatless burger had fizzled out instead of sizzling. McPlant, he put it bluntly, “wasn't successful” in the San Francisco Bay area or Dallas.
U.S. consumers aren't “looking for McPlant or other plant-based proteins from McDonald's right now,” Erlinger said Wednesday. “It is a trend that we will continue to monitor.”
At the heart of McPlant was a burger jointly developed with Beyond Meat, which included vegetarian ingredients such as peas, rice and potatoes.
Plant burgers appeared at eight McDonald's nationwide in late 2021, including locations in El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. As of January 2022, 600 restaurants in the Bay Area and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area offered meatless sandwiches.
At the time, the fast-food giant tempted customers by suggesting they take a road trip to try the McPlant, available only “for a limited time, while supplies last,” the company wrote in a press release.
But a March 2022 analysis by research firm BTIG indicated that demand had weakened and consumers were disappointed with culinary creation.
Participating restaurants in the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth were selling 20 McPlants a day, less than the 40 to 60 they expected. Only three to five sandwiches were sold per day in the most rural areas of East Texas, Marketwatch reported at the time.
That July, the company ended testing the meatless burger without revealing plans for a nationwide launch. The desire for meat alternatives increased rapidly between 2019 and 2021 in the United States, but declined in 2022 and declined in 2023, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to animal proteins.
However, that's not necessarily the case across the Atlantic, where McDonald's plant-based offerings have seemingly found greener pastures. In European markets, you can find the McPlant burger on a sesame bun with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, vegan sandwich sauce, vegan cheese, pickles, and onions.
In the United States, Erlinger said the company is focusing on chicken options, which are more popular with American consumers.
