Within four years of its original launch, meager sales and a lack of enthusiasm led the franchise to discontinue the burger for good. In the mids, the ultra-successful fast food chain found itself in a market that was becoming increasingly competitive.
The result was the creation of the Arch Deluxe burger, an item that simultaneously promised to mature the chain's menu offerings and customer base. The adult-themed burger was officially released on May 9, , at an event held at the Radio City Music Hall. McDonald's was also dealing with an image problem. Historically, the chain's advertising campaigns and gimmicks had been clearly targeted toward children with Happy Meals, playgrounds, and toys being an expected and highly anticipated part of the consumer experience.
The company hoped the new burger would shed their reputation as a kid-centric eatery. Up until the release of the Arch Deluxe , the majority of menu items at McDonald's were made with kids - and their taste buds - in mind. This grown-up burger was the chain's response to the perceived gap in their consumer market. The event featured not only the release of the Arch Deluxe burger, but also a more sophisticated Ronald McDonald - insofar as he was clad in a suit instead of his traditional stripes and oversized shoes.
For this '96 update, he was introduced with a "cool new swagger" alongside a troop of glamorous, dancing Rockettes. One campaign of commercials focused specifically on clarifying who the Arch Deluxe was really for: adults. Some new items failed because customers just didn't like change.
In other cases, a menu item didn't sell due to ineffective marketing or simply because it didn't appease many customers' taste buds. Many concoctions have come and gone from the McDonald's menu, proving that sticking a "Mc" prefix in a sandwich's name won't make it sell.
We'll explore five flops that went down in flames. Most of them came after the company's founder, Ray Kroc, died. However, the first flop we'll talk about was actually Kroc's brainchild.
McDonald's founder, Ray Kroc, was a brilliant businessman -- when he kept out of the kitchen. After buying the business's rights from the McDonald brothers, he expanded into new geographic markets but soon discovered a problem with the sales in regions with large Catholic populations. According to church canon, Catholics over the age of 14 are required to abstain from meat on Fridays. Kroc had high hopes for his non-meat option called " The Hula Burger " -- grilled pineapple with cheese on a bun.
He positioned his burger to compete against the Filet-o-Fish sandwich, which was invented by a Catholic franchisee. The Filet-o-Fish won hands down while the Hula tanked. Since then, American Catholics have relaxed their traditional Friday custom. It's still popular to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent , however, and McDonald's typically discounts the Filet-o-Fish sandwich during that time to boost sales. Although Kroc managed to stop his Hula Burger short and avoided reaching national embarrassment, the company wasn't so lucky with these next flops.
McDonald's tried to solve dilemma in the late s and early s with the McPizza. To build the dinner menu, it even tried adding similar options like lasagna and spaghetti [source: Kidd ].
Unfortunately, McDonald's customers didn't forget. On top of that, McDonald's customers who were used to fast service were irritated by the long wait times for made-to-order pizza. Although the effort failed, some franchises kept the McPizza on the menu for a while. It wasn't that the McPizza fared doing better in those markets; the franchises were stuck with pizza ovens they paid fifty grand for [source: Berss ]. Instead of seeing a fun-loving Ronald McDonald dancing around with kids, TV viewers saw commercials of kids grimacing in disgust at the latest McDonald's burger.
This new burger, dubbed the Arch Deluxe , was supposed to appeal to adult tastes with a secret mustard-mayonnaise sauce. That's right: McDonald's -- the symbol of fast, low-priced American food -- was seeking the sophisticated, urban demographic.
As you may have guessed, it didn't work. It seems adults didn't find a child's sheer disgust at a sandwich very appetizing. The company tried another approach -- this time with commercials featuring Ronald McDonald at clubs, golfing and playing pool.
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