A former McDonald’s chef has explained why some stores miss out on popular menu items as he cleared up the classic ‘participating restaurants’ disclaimer.
While McDonald’s has a pretty set menu of items, there are times when they rotate in specials for brief periods. We’ve seen this with the Chicken Sharebox, the McRib, spicy chicken nuggets, and different McFlurries.
Some of these items might turn up at one store in your area, but not another, thanks to the ‘at participating restaurants only’ disclaimer.
This can be pretty annoying, especially if you see an item advertised online but you can’t get it at your local store. Now, former McDonald’s corporate chef Mike Haracz has cleared up why this is the case.
“Well, you have to understand the relationship between the corporate entity of McDonald’s and the franchisees,” Haracz said, noting that while franchise owners have an agreement with McDonald’s, they can make some decisions of their own.
“There are not a lot of corporate McDonald’s. Most of them now are franchisee-owned and operated. Those owner-operators vote on certain menu items, menu offerings, the price of items. McDonald’s corporate recommends the price, how many crew, and what level you should pay them, but they cannot dictate to the franchisees exactly those things.
“So, when it’s participating restaurants, a region or group has decided ‘no, we don’t want that new thing, we’ve got these other items on the menu or other marketing plans or whatever’ and they get to do that.”
There are also some items that you can only get at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, which has their international store.
This, for a few weeks, includes curly fries and one of the most popular McFlurries from Japan. Canadian McDonald’s restaurants are offering pizza pockets for a limited time too.
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