in selling a fresh-beef hamburger—with all the
logistical and food-safety risks that entails—at
the scale, speed, and price its customers expect?
T
HE BRAND;NE W HEADQUAR TERS
of McDonald’s, a nine-story
open-plan office tower, are in
the rising Chicago neighborhood
of the West Loop. From 1971
until this past June, the company operated out of a parklike campus in suburban Oak Brook, Illinois, 20 miles outside of the
city. Now it’s on a stretch of West Randolph Street
that is currently Chicago’s hottest restaurant row.
“We felt like it would get us closer to our custom-
ers, closer to the competition, closer to the trends
that are shaping society,” says Easterbrook. Plus,
he notes, it’s good for recruiting: “The talent tends
to be living downtown.” The young corporate
employees toting Sweetgreen bags back across
the street to their office during a recent lunch
hour—because who can eat McDonald’s every
day?—demonstrate that Easterbrook’s plan is
already taking hold. Several told me excitedly
about the expanded lunch options the new HQ
will provide.
The McDonald’s café in the lobby of the build-
ing has one feature you won’t find anywhere
else: a rotating selection of regional items from
outposts around the world, including a spicy-
chicken sandwich from Hong Kong. The limited
availability of these items has turned out to be
a canny marketing move, sparking a flood of
social media interest and press coverage, but
the space is also, clearly, a test lab. Menu chief
Linda VanGosen, who joined McDonald’s from
Starbucks last year, works closely with chefs
and food scientists at McDonald’s suppliers and
keeps a close eye on food trends, which have to
reach a certain level of mass appeal to make sense
for McDonald’s. She and her team also conduct
ethnographic research, including shadowing
customers to see how McDonald’s fits into their
lives, and take what VanGosen refers to as food
safaris, eating their way across America. “If we
want to find great coffee, we’ll probably go to the
West Coast,” she says. “For burgers, it’s probably
somewhere in the South.”
A key insight she’s learned is that what con-
sumers say they want, and what they actually
buy, are two different things, which presents an
interesting challenge. “That’s kind of the secret
sauce,” VanGosen says. “What’s an emotional
need you can answer?”
The company had been receiving consistent
feedback from a wide range of consumers in recent
years—both via focus groups and from unsolicited
comments—that its beef patty, the cornerstone of
its business, was subpar. But figuring out exactly
what customers found unsatisfying took time.
Eventually, McDonald’s determined that the burger
was too dry and didn’t arrive hot enough, and
executives discerned that the culprit in both cases
was the flash-freezing process the patties had
been subjected to. “We looked at a lot of things—
They found that the
patty itself didn’t have
to change, just the way
it was handled. Keep-
ing the meat fresh and
cooking each burger
to order improves the
eating experience im-
mensely. “The game
changer turned out to be serving it hot off the
grill,” she says, adding that the never-frozen
patties cook in 60 to 80 seconds—about a minute
faster than frozen ones—which also helps offset
the added time it takes restaurant workers to
start cooking each burger as soon as it’s ordered.
McDonald’s declines to reveal the costs associ-
ated with the new patty, beyond saying that it is
not appreciably more expensive to produce than
the frozen version, and that consumers won’t see
an increase in price. “I haven’t seen data on this,
THE COMPANY HAS
HOMED IN ON ITS
ESSENTIAL PRODUCT:
A HAMBURGER, THE
BIGGEST, BURGERIEST
HAMBURGER
MCDONALD’S SELLS.
