McDonald’s Seems Shocked That People Actually Want to Eat Its Chicken Tenders
Mickey D’s says customers can no longer order its new Buttermilk Crispy Tenders due to demand that “far surpassed our expectations.” Apparently, the month-old item is getting an unexpectedly positive reception, and that’s put the chain in an unfamiliar bind: a serious run on a normal, everyday, non–Szechuan sauce menu item. To handle the situation, McDonald’s tells Business Insider it’s going to have to stop selling tenders until at least late December. “We will soon take a brief break from serving them at our restaurants,” it said in a statement, adding they should be back “by the end of next month.”
The new tenders came out in October, the 2.0 version of the Chicken Selects that went AWOL in 2015, upsetting a fair number of Americans. McDonald’s overhauled recipe fries 100 percent white-meat chicken southern-style with buttermilk, a move executives hoped would demonstrate McDonald’s commitment to “simple, unpretentious food.” They were a hit with respected food critics like the Washington Post’s Tim Carman (“They’re actually really good”), even though they’re literally what goes on the Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich, just cut into smaller pieces. One of McDonald’s chefs, Michael Haracz, said it was “another example of how we’re giving people the food they love.”
Looks like Chef Haracz was right. But maybe the company hedged its bets (or is trying its hand at creating artificial scarcity), because availability was problematic almost from the beginning. Just weeks after tenders rolled out, they’d joined ice cream on the list of things you may or may not be able to get at your local store:
