Posted on: Wednesday, February 16, 2005
At McDonald's, the chicken's free
By Bruce Horovitz
USA Today
McDonald's, the kingpin of all things beef, plans to hand out millions of free samples this week from what has quickly evolved into its fastest-growing food line: chicken.
The giveaway: Chicken Selects, its profitable chicken strips that fetch about $4.39 for a five-piece order. McDonald's expects to hand out more than 4 million tomorrow through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Customers will be given one chicken strip and one sauce per person per visit at participating stores while supplies last.
The beef giant sees the writing on the walls of the chicken coop. Some 60 percent of the chicken sold by the restaurant industry in the United States is sold by fast-food restaurants.
Retail sales of all chicken sold domestically will rocket from $31.5 billion in 1995 to $50.4 billion this year, the National Chicken Council projects. The typical American will consume 87.5 pounds of chicken this year, compared with 78 pounds in 2000. From November 2003 to November 2004, sales of chicken strips at fast-food facilities rose 12.5 percent.
McDonald's is counting on its Chicken Selects to lure more chicken lovers. Since they were introduced in August 2004, Selects have been a huge success and helped increase the company's same-store sales by double digits. With the giveaway, McDonald's hopes to garner buzz and customer tryouts.
"McDonald's is preparing for the end of America's love of the burger," says Ron Paul, president of Technomic. "The low-carb fad has slowed — and so will burger sales."
McDonald's executives insist their burger sales haven't slowed, but the company is well-aware of growing consumer interest in chicken.
"People still think of us as a burger place," says Wade Thoma, vice president of U.S. menu management. "It will take a long time to convince people we're a great chicken place, too."
Industry analysts are impressed at the audacity of the promotion.
"It will help McDonald's capture traffic from competitors," says Christopher Muller, director of the Center for Multi-Unit Restaurant Management at Orlando's University of Central Florida. "It will nudge some consumers to switch."
But it won't be easy.
To introduce its new french fries in early 1998 — and again in 1999 — Burger King gave away millions of orders of fries for a day. "It's a high-wire act," says Denny Post, chief concept officer at Burger King. "Freebies are highly stressful to the system." But it got lots of publicity.
Burger King has five chicken products on its menu compared with three a year ago. A form of chicken strips might be in the works there, too, but the company won't comment.
