Exploring the History and Manufactured Availability of McDonald’s McRib Sandwich

December 9, 2020

Digging into the question of why McDonald’s McRib sandwich only seems to be available at random times of the year, David Harris gets into some really fascinating details about the process. And what sourcing ingredients means, when you’re a company that has the footprint the size of McDonald’s.

Here’s one fascinating tidbit:

[…] in 2011 [McDonald’s] had to abandon the idea of using celery root in one of its food items because to offer the item, McDonald’s would have had to buy all of the world’s celery root supply, and there still would not have been enough celery to meet the projected demand. A frequent problem for the restaurant chain that annually serves 1/27th of all restaurant food consumed in the world, and caters to about 1 percent of the world’s population on any given day.

An interesting note is that, after its initial launch, the McRib was not really considered successful. But as of 2005, McDonald’s found a great deal of success in marketing the sandwich’s impeding doom and unavailability:

In November 2005, McDonald’s announced that it would no longer be carrying the McRib and started the McRib Farewell Tour. McDonald’s created a petition to save the McRib under the assumed name as the “Boneless Pig Farmer’s Association of America.”

The Farewell Tour was so successful that McDonald’s decided to cancel the sandwich again in 2006 and have a second Farewell Tour. Its success led to a third and finally a fourth Farewell tour, after which it was returned to regional menus for intermittent release.

The marketing strategy and history behind this sandwich was a fascinating thing to read. Thinking in terms of a company whose reach is so… incredibly global was also pretty fascinating. I’ve never really cared much for the McRib, but do have a vague pop-culture sense that there exists a certain segment of Americans who do – and passionately so.

Me? I’m still waiting to try out the McLobster roll.

[CC photo via Ronald Woan]