McDonald’s Is Making Changes to Its Iconic Burgers

It promises the tweaks will make them 'even better.'

April 17, 2023

Photo by: Photo courtesy of McDonald's

Photo courtesy of McDonald's

A McDonald’s burger is a McDonald’s burger — the kind of thing you can rely on to be consistent day after day, lunch after lunch, year after year. But now, Mickey D’s is changing up its classic burgers in several key ways to make them, the chain says, “even better.”

Several “small but tasty improvements” are coming to your McDonald’s Hamburger, along with your Big Mac, McDouble burger, classic Cheeseburger and Double Cheeseburger, McDonald’s has announced. The changes, which have been well received as they’ve rolled out in international markets including

Australia, Canada and Belgium, will hit the U.S. this year. Now being served in several West Coast cities (including Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, Boise and Tucson), the improved burgers will be available nationwide in 2024.

So … what, exactly, is changing? For starters, the burgers will be served on new, freshly toasted buns that are “softer” and more “pillowy.” They’ll also feature meltier cheese, a “juicier, caramelized flavor” that comes from adding white onions to them on the grill and more Big Mac sauce for added tangy sweetness.

“I’ll always remember my first burger from McDonald’s. And now my culinary team and I have the best job in the world: thinking about ways to bring even more of that iconic McDonald’s taste to fans,” Chef Chad Schafer, senior director of culinary innovation at McDonald’s USA, says in a press statement. “We found that small changes, like tweaking our process to get hotter, meltier cheese and adjusting our grill settings for a better sear, added up to a big difference in making our burgers more flavorful than ever.”

To introduce the burger tweaks, McDonald’s is bringing back its old character the Hamburglar (remember that rascally beef thief?) and sending him into select cities to signal that the newly tweaked burgers have arrived.

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