Welcome to McDonalds. I'm sorry we don't serve McNuggets at breakfast

If I could get Chik'n Minis for dinner? Oh god.

 

I used to think there was nothing better than Sweet and Sour sauce for your McNuggets. I was wrong. Bone Suckin' Mustard came completely out of nowhere and just pwns sweet and sour. I use it on everything: sammiches, wings, bbq, anything. God Mustard.

 

I'm old enough - although not as old as JR - to remember when McDonald's didn't serve breakfast.

 

One way to ruin a perfectly good weekend (those which I don't have to work) is to look up at the clock on Saturday morning and realize that it's too late to go get a Chick-Fil-A biscuit. It's almost two whole days before I can satisfy that craving.

 

It takes about 15 seconds to flip the settings back and forth. A few more to clean off the grill so we're not cooking eggs in hamburger juices. That's probably too much during busy times, but I'd say the real reason is the variety of the menu that McDonald's has that other places don't. McDonald's serves a shit-ton of different items.

The bigger problem would be the Universal Holding Cabinet. McDonald's has an incredibly varied menu for a fast-food place. The Universal Holding Cabinet is where we build up a bunch of product to be put together when it's ordered (there's no way on earth a McDonald's could start cooking to order, it's too busy). It's got a bunch of trays that sit at about eye level for the people putting together orders.

During breakfast, the UHC holds sausage, bacon, canadian bacon, chicken products, folded eggs, round eggs, scrambled eggs, pancake platters, breakfast burritos, McGriddles, mcmuffins, bagels, biscuits.

During lunch/supper, it holds regular meat, quarter-pound meat, angus meat, grilled chicken, mcchicken, spicy chicken, chicken strips, chicken mcnuggets, fish filets and probably another half-dozen things I'm forgetting about right now.

There's just no room for both at the same time.

There's simply no room in the UHC for both at the same time. And from 10-2 and 5-9, even this podunk McDonald's is simply way, way too busy to be cooking stuff to order. I've worked a lot of fast food places, and McDonald's probably does three times the volume in a lunch-rush hour that Hardee's or BK did, and the lunch rushes last an extra hour or two. My *only* job is to cook stuff on the grill (it's a separate person's job to cook stuff in the meat fryers, another person's to do just fries, and three or four more people's to build the orders as they come in). Just keeping up on the grilling is pretty much non-stop action during busy times. There's no time to stop and make a special order with any regularity.

 

I'm old enough to remember when McDonald's didn't EXIST.

 

I didn't think anybody was that old.

 

I stumbled across a documentary awhile back about the people that plan the McDonald's menu, come up with the new items and the "limited time only" items. It was really interesting. Basically, there isn't anything they haven't at one point considered, but the vast majority of ideas never make it to stores because of all the problems, everything from taste and quality control (yes, really), to distribution and prep time.

 

QC is everything to food service - yes, even McDonald's.

But who orders it? Do enough people order it? Can it be used with anything else on the existing menu? Is there enough profit margin? If enough people order it, can enough supply be rolled out to meet demand?

 

I worked night crew at a grocery store a couple of summers during my college years, and when I got off work between 6 and 7 a.m., I didn't want a McMuffin, either.

Simple solution: White Castle. Sliders served 24-7. I'll take those over McNuggets any day of the week.

 

JR: McDonald's customer #0000000000001