feMcDonald’s Rebrands Fancy Burgers Created Via Kiosk

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What does the name “TasteCrafted” sound like to you? If you said “a mass-produced product that calls itself ‘artisan,'” you’d be close: that was one of the names tested for pricier, higher-quality, customized burgers at McDonald’s. The new name is “Chef Crafted,” since there’s nothing that the public associates more with McDonald’s than a trained chef carefully assembling burgers in the kitchen.

Maybe that’s not fair, though: McDonald’s does employ chefs to create new recipes and products in its test kitchen, and they created the original burgers. The kiosks are also being tested under the name Create Your Taste, and that test continues in thousands of restaurants.

Customers weren’t really into the original name, a McDonald’s spokesperson told Bloomberg Businessweek, and the new name at least implies that there are humans involved in the process somewhere. “We decided to celebrate our chefs who have created these recipes,” she explained, “and highlight the culinary expertise of our in-house and supplier chefs.”

The public is showing off its own culinary expertise, too: the unpopular chef-created burger flavors of “hot jalapeño” and “deluxe” will go off the menu, and both new items replacing them will include bacon.

McDonald’s Revamps Build-Your-Own Burger Program to Draw Diners [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist