Word: snacking
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McDonald's has doubtless benefited from the weak economy - its low-cost, seemingly healthy Snack Wraps (soft tortillas filled with chicken, lettuce and cheese) are perfectly positioned to feed a nation simultaneously worried about money and fat - but the company's boom actually began in 2006, before the recession hit. A major reason was the improvement in its menu. A glowing Feb. 2 Goldman Sachs analyst's report on McDonald's is typical of Wall Street sentiments. The report says McDonald's is "stepping up investment when peers cannot" and cites the "strong new product pipeline" as a key factor...
...turns out there's a chef at the beginning of that pipeline - a cook who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and who once ran the gracious kitchens at the Four Seasons Resort and Club outside Dallas. The Southwest Salad, the Angus burgers, the Snack Wrap - they all emerged from the food laboratory of Daniel Coudreaut, 44, whose business card reads "Director of Culinary Innovation, Menu Management" but who likes to go by Chef Dan. (See the top 10 bad beverage ideas...
...move that could be the New Coke of Coudreaut's career, his kitchen has created the Mac Snack Wrap, or Mac Wrap for short. The Mac Wrap is the first new version of the Big Mac the company has introduced since the iconic burger was launched in the 1960s. The Big Mac remains on the menu - the company isn't stupid - but executives were so fearful of spinning off a variant that internal negotiations and testing took a year. "Don't touch" was the attitude toward the Big Mac when he arrived, says Coudreaut. The fact that the top brass...
...people: marketers, franchise representatives, engineers who specialize in food hold times, operations managers who know precisely how far refrigerated trucks can drive before food rots and money people who have read reams of market research that has relentlessly focus-grouped every ingredient combination that could be part of a Snack Wrap...
...equipment to produce any new menu item. They often have ideas for Coudreaut's team to appraise - the Angus burgers were co-developed with a group of California franchisees - and they often push back against odd-sounding creations like one of Coudreaut's failures, a breakfast Snack Wrap made with a crepe that held vanilla cream cheese and fruit. ("Why it didn't work is because we served it cold," Coudreaut says. "We serve hot food. Even our salads, we serve warm chicken on top.") The testing process is painstaking: it took two years for the Angus Third Pounders...