McDonald's Is Upgrading Its Burgers From Bun to Meat

Soft toasted buns, perfectly melted cheese, onions caramelized directly onto seared beef patties…These tempting descriptions sound like they're about mouthwatering burgers served up by a premium restaurant, but they actually describe the future of burgers at the biggest fast-food name in the game: McDonald's.

The company just announced that it is planning to roll out several major upgrades to heighten all the best qualities of its signature burgers. This includes using softer buns toasted to a perfect golden brown, searing white onions directly onto burger patties for a "juicier, caramelized flavor," and ensuring that all cheese reaches optimal meltiness, McDonald's said.

McDonald's will implement these changes with the Big Mac, McDouble, classic cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, and hamburger. Big Macs will also come with even more of that beloved creamy and tangy Big Mac sauce.

"We found that small changes, like tweaking our process to get hotter, meltier cheese and adjusting our grill settings for a better sear, added up to a big difference in making our burgers more flavorful than ever," chef Chad Schafer, the senior director of culinary innovation for McDonald's United States arm, said in a statement.

McDonald's plans to implement the upgrades at all of its restaurants in the United States by 2024. It has already introduced these changes in Australia, Canada, and Belgium, and is starting to implement them in several cities on the West Coast in the United States. These lucky cities include Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

Focusing on core menu items like signature burgers, fries, and Chicken McNuggets was a key tenet of the Accelerating the Arches growth strategy that McDonald's announced in 2020. McDonald's said that it wanted to explore ways to improve upon its classics in order to "deliver hotter, juicier, more delicious burgers to our customers across the globe," something that this latest burger upgrade initiative seems to fulfill.

As the chain plans some major innovations for its classic menu items, it is also innovating the way it conducts business. Earlier this month, the company reportedly shut down its offices and laid off hundreds of corporate employees as part of a major restructuring aimed at making operations more efficient and streamlined.

But McDonald's is far from struggling. The company beat estimates for both earnings and revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 as customers balked at inflation and traded down from full-service restaurants to fast food.

While American customers await the forthcoming burger upgrades, they can sample several new or limited-time items that have recently hit McDonald's menus, including a Strawberry Shortcake McFlurry and classic lemonade.