Happy Friday!

3 Numbers

1 out of 8

People in the U.S. who have worked at McDonald’s at some point in their lives, including Jeff Bezos, Rachel McAdams, and our nation’s most esteemed judge, Greg Mathis. The company is highlighting this stat in a new hiring campaign (and in this email, you’re about to learn more than you’d ever like to know about the cultural ubiquity of McDonald’s).

$623 million

Price to be paid by Apollo Global Management for The Restaurant Group, the UK-based operator of the very-fun-to-say Wagamama, among other chains. Restaurant Group has had a difficult last few years; prior to the acquisition announcement, its stock had dropped 90% from its 2015 peak.

9.2%

Year-over-year increase in restaurant sales for the month of September, a rate higher than the annual rate of inflation. The industry is starting to look like Rocky in the championship rounds: Despite student loan repayments, tapped-out pandemic savings, and a multi-year inflationary environment, sales remain pretty strong.

Please help me, I can’t stop reading the McDonalds’ wiki

My newest obsession began at an unexpected place: a search for the correct spelling of “Hamburglar.” (It’s “-ar,” not “-er.”)

I needed this information because I wanted to make a joke in the newsletter about the Hamburglar facing criminal racketeering charges. This led me on a journey deep into the McDonald’s Wiki – a magical, strange corner of the Internet.

The McDonald’s Wiki is hosted on the website Fandom, which allows anyone to create or edit pages of content that’s tied to their favorite intellectual property. The site’s rules for what makes something “notable” seem to be a bit more lax than Wikipedia: the Harry Potter Wiki, for instance, features lengthy entries for characters who are mentioned once in the book series.

The McDonald’s Wiki contains over 1,000 pages. (The Bible’s, by the way, has 750.) Here, you can read everything you’d ever want to know about McDonaldland characters like Birdie, Ronald, and Grimace – who, we learn, was once Ronald’s sworn enemy, due to his kleptomaniacal urge to steal soft drinks.

McDonald’s Lore tells us that Ronald permanently gained an upper hand over Grimace by giving him a flyer which stated that Grimace had been entered into a contest (?), only to later dunk the purple beast in Filet-O-Fish Lake while pretending to take his picture (??). Cowed into submission, Grimace swore allegiance to Ronald, and, the Wiki goes on to say, “The friendship between both Ronald & Grimace remain very important in the clown's history [sic].”

One wonders though if Grimace is just biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity to seek his revenge – perhaps on the forbidding shores of Filet-O-Fish Lake.

This is just one of many stories that have now taken away several hours of my life. I’m not alone: Some of the Wiki’s pages feature dozens of comments – real people speculating if Birdie is offended by McDonalds’ decision to serve McNuggets; other presumably real people responding that Mayor McCheese faces a more brutal dilemma, as his head is a cheeseburger.

The content isn’t limited to the comings and goings of the inhabitants of Mcdonaldland. Every menu item in McDonald’s history — from the McLobster Roll (a seasonal dish until-recently available in the Atlantic Canada and New England markets and priced, incredibly, at $7.99), to the McSpaghetti (which was discontinued in 1980 – except in the Philippines and Orlando, Florida, where it’s still served today) — has its own entry.

The pages on menu items suffer a bit from both a lack of editorial oversight and the Mandela Effect – the psychological phenomenon when masses of people collectively misremember something. One entry is dedicated to the “Bucket of Fries,” a discontinued menu item “big enough for five people to enjoy.” I was unable to corroborate if this actually existed, much less whether it was discontinued after a “group of 4 teenagers were hospitalized for sodium overdose,” although a bunch of people on Reddit seem to remember it.

Even corporate staff are included in the Wiki’s fun – interestingly, former CEO Don Thompson boasts a long entry, but slightly more controversial CEO Steve Easterbrook gets just one line.

McDonald’s has been culturally ubiquitous for so long that the deeper you dive into the Wiki, the more disorienting the experience becomes:

• Did you know Donald Trump once costarred in a commercial with Grimace?

• That the 1988 E.T.-ripoff Mac and Me is essentially a feature-length McDonald’s commercial, and that it includes a 5-minute dance sequence inside a McDonald’s?

• That a floating McDonald’s was once constructed in Vancouver, British Columbia on a 187-foot-barge? That it was officially named the Friendship 500? And unofficially, the McBarge?

What can we take away from all this? For one, I may need psychiatric help. And two, that McDonalds’ Lore is an underappreciated advantage for the company.

McDonald’s has many obvious strengths: Its unparalleled real estate portfolio, iconic menu items, globally known Golden Arches. But it’s also sitting on a treasure trove of IP – a Marvel-esque amount of pop-culture content that it can harvest for years.

Recently, the company has really been tapping into this goldmine:

• Last October, McDonald’s collaborated with the streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market to introduce a line of Adult Happy Meals. Combining childhood nostalgia with a sought-after fashion house turned out to be marketing catnip: the meals sold out in a matter of weeks; toys were later sold for hundreds of dollars on eBay.

• In June, McDonald’s launched a promotion to celebrate Grimace’s birthday, featuring a meal of either McNuggets or a Big Mac, fries, and the “berry”-flavored Grimace Shake. After it inspired an absurdist viral video trend, it became one of the most successful marketing campaigns in fast-food history. When CEO Chris Kempczinski reported McDonald’s stellar Q2 results, he said, “If I’m being honest, the theme was Grimace.”

• On that same earnings call, Kempczinski teased a smaller-format restaurant design McDonald’s will begin testing in early 2024 named “CosMcs.” CosMc was a googly-eyed alien character who appeared in McDonald’s TV commercials in the late-80s and early-90s. Details on the new concept are scarce — as are people who actually remember CosMc. But at this point, I wouldn’t bet against its success.

So where does McDonald’s go from here? Here’s one possible direction: why not tap into the recent success of Barbie and Super Mario Bros and get these Mcdonaldland characters on the big screen?

Imagine: a gritty, Michael Mann-directed heist flick. We follow our masked anti-hero from behind as he breaks into a secure military installation. We watch him hop a fence, cut the security camera lines and crack into a vault – filled to the brim with Big Macs. Coming this fall: Hamburglar.

Name That Chain!

You get three hints to guess this week’s mystery chain:

• This concept was named after a movie character played by Gene Hackman.

• In 2014, it bought many of its core recipes from the company Diversified Food and Seasonings for $43 million. The mystery chain had previously paid Diversified an annual royalty for its recipe licensing rights.

• Beyoncé has a card from the chain that entitles her to free food for life — however in 2003, she told Oprah she was too embarrassed to actually use it.

WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY CHAIN? (The answer will be in next week’s email.)

Last week’s answer: A&W Restaurants

Quick Hits

• Dominos announces earnings… In its quarterly earnings report last week, Dominos topped earnings estimates but did report a year-over-year delivery sales drop of 2.3%, which contributed to an overall same-store sales contraction of 0.6% for the quarter. To help counter the delivery drop, the company is preparing a national rollout with Uber Eats — Dominos had previously been a notable holdout from third-party delivery.

• The “elevated” chicken nugget is here… Taco Bell began testing Crispy Chicken Nuggets at Minneapolis area locations last week, with an eye towards a potential nationwide rollout sometime in the near future. The company threw a bit of shade at the Golden Arches in unveiling its nuggets, which are made with boneless white-meat chicken and marinated in a jalapeño buttermilk.

• Starbucks, Starbucks union sue each other… After Worker’s United posted a “Solidarity with Palestine” image on social media on Oct. 9 (triggering calls for a Starbucks boycott), Starbucks has filed a lawsuit demanding the union stop using both a circular green logo and the name “Starbucks Workers United.” Workers United is in turn suing Starbucks for both defamation and the right to use the name and logo.

• Let’s check in with Gen Z… Zoomers are tightening the belts on their baggy jeans, according to a new Bank of America survey, which found that 73% of participants are modifying their lifestyles due to inflation. 43% said that they are now cooking from home more frequently instead of dining out.  

• If you build a Victorian-Egyptian palace, they will come… Restaurant nerds know that Cheesecake Factory is an operational unicorn — it turns out it’s also an economic one, according to a recent Moody’s report which found that malls with a Cheesecake Factory tend to be more financially current on their loans than malls without one.

• Dry off before hitting the pinball machine… Chuck E. Cheese announced its first-ever location-based licensing deal this week — the pizza-and-games purveyor will bring branded rides, merch, and its own themed area to a soon-to-be-opened California Dreamin’ water park in Sacramento, CA. Pasqually is set to sling pies at his eponymous pizzeria, and appearances will also be made by the following characters (deep breath): Chuck, Jasper T. Jowls, Mr. Munch, Hellen Henny, and the intriguingly named Bella B.

• Salted raises $14mm… Salted, the delivery-first restaurant operator of Moonbowls and other healthy brands, announced a $14mm Series B funding round this week. It plans to use the money to open more locations and acquire more brands (Salted is somewhat unique in the delivery restaurant space in that it operates its own brands and locations).

#Content Recs

• I suppose it’s McDonald’s week here at Restaurant Weekly: former McD’s corporate chef Mike Haracz — who has been highlighted here before — took to TikTok to explain why the “far superior” well-done hash brown will never make the menu.

• And what unites Mongolia, North Korea, and Iceland? They’re on the short list of countries that don’t have a McDonald’s, according to this strangely fascinating map.

• How Raising Cane’s and Post Malone formed a partnership — and the unexpected location Posty wants to next bring a Cane’s.

• YouTubers Eddy Burback and Ted Nivison went to every Margaritaville in the U.S. (and Canada) over a three-week period. (Last year they hit every Rainforest Cafe in the country — a ridiculous video that I enjoyed a bit more.)

• Interesting Restaurant Business piece on how large language models like ChatGPT are rapidly improving the capabilities of drive-thru AI platforms.

• Costco founder Jim Senegal once warned current CEO Craig Jelinek, “If you raise the [price of] the **** hot dog, I will kill you.” So with a new boss taking the helm at Costco next year, The Takeout asks the question on all our minds: will he or she dare to increase the hot dog price from $1.50?

• Brits having their minds blown by trying proper Southern food for the first time.

Finally — in an attempt to spur the imaginations of fast-food R&D departments across America — each week I’ll highlight an international LTO that should warrant at least some menu consideration in the States. This week: THAI KFC STREET FOOD.

These YouTubers tried the entire menu, including Zabb-crusted wings, the Double Cheese Zinger Burger, and the Green Curry and Spicy Chicken rice bowls, which align KFC’s offerings with local street vendors. Burn off all our taste buds, KFC of America, and bring this to the States!  

See ya next week.