A former McDonald’s chef has taken to TikTok to reveal why the fast food giant refuses to sell a popular chicken item.
Chef Mike Haracz has built a following of over 319,000 on TikTok by sharing his experience working at McDonald’s, as well as revealing interesting insider secrets.
In one of his latest videos, Haracz answered a question from a viewer who wanted to know why the chain’s grilled chicken has disappeared from the US menu.
Grilled chicken first made an appearance in 1994 with the introduction of the McGrilled Chicken Classic, followed years later by the Artisan Grilled Chicken in 2015. It also featured in the popular Snack Wraps, but these were discontinued in 2020 during the height of the pandemic and have yet to return.
Although the discontinuation of grilled chicken items seemed partly due to vendor and logistical challenges, Haracz explained that low demand was the main reason they were removed.
“It’s really because y’all didn’t buy enough,” he told viewers. “A lot of times there are menu items that need to meet a certain threshold to be profitable for McDonald’s to keep on the menu.”
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He said that customers continued choosing the less healthy options even when healthier ones were removed from the menu. It was more costly to maintain items like grilled chicken and salads than to remove them, given the limited demand from customers who actually bought them.
“McDonald’s realized that if those options are not available, you’re still gonna come in and order the other thing,” he noted. “This also drastically simplifies things in the kitchen, the less different types of protein that they need to cook and have available at any given time, that makes things a lot easier.”
However, many customers argued in the comments that certain items, like Snack Wraps, had a strong following and were actually popular among a large group of buyers.
“Dude. Where the Snack Wraps go? I know ‘we’ did buy those! Please help!” one person wrote. “Those premium McWraps were fire when I worked at a store back in 2013,” another said.
In September, McDonald’s added chicken strips to menus at US test locations, leading many to believe that the beloved Snack Wraps will make its return soon.
