The concept of the limited-time fast food item is huge business and nearly every major chain dedicates at least one or two slots on their menu to unique fast food boxes that sell at a premium.
It works so brilliantly in part by using FOMO as its secret ingredient; customers will pay the added expense with the promise of a new experience that they might not find again for a while.
Most companies have a monthly variety slot, and nearly every takeaway has a festive speciality item suited for the festive period.
However, whilst not the first limited-time item, one of the first to establish the concept and transform how consumers and businesses think of fast food alike was the result of a beloved and highly popular failure.
In The Army Now
The story of the famous McRib begins with the United States Army’s Natick Labs food division, the creators of many shelf-stable innovations designed to increase the variety and palatability of MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) rations served in the field.
One of these was the concept of meat restructuring, where flakes and pieces of meat that were not otherwise cut off to use in pork chops, ham, bacon or joints could be pressed together to make a pork patty.
Executive Chef at McDonalds René Arend, the man who also invented the Chicken McNugget, who was tasked with creating a substitute item when demand for the now-ubiquitous nuggets was far higher than expected.
His idea was to take bulk pork and flatten it into a flat rectangular patty more reminiscent of a rack of ribs, served with barbecue sauce, onions and gherkin on an oval roll rather than a typical round burger bun.
It was more expensive as a result and required bespoke boxes, but he believed that this would make the meal more unique.
Love, No Money
The McRib was phenomenally popular with test customers in the Midwest of the United States, and for a brief time in 1981, it appeared to be another winner for the golden arches.
Sadly, this optimistic hope would quickly be dashed, as it did not sell well at all nationwide.
It was later seen as an example of a dish that not everyone liked, but the people who did absolutely adored it. As well as this, it was believed by McDonald’s executives that Americans do not eat enough pork for it to be a permanent fixture and so it was removed entirely in 1985.
A Second, Intermittent Life
However, when it was brought back for a limited-time promotion in 1989, it was far more successful, accidentally stumbling onto the FOMO strategy that would be taken to new extremes in the late 1990s by the Beanie Babies, and every year the McRib would see a limited release.
Probably the most substantial of these was in 1994 when the McRib was released throughout the summer as a tie-in sponsorship with the live-action adaptation of The Flintstones.
This trend continued until 2005, when the first of four “farewell tours” emerged alongside a fake petition to save it, with the farewell tours typically coinciding with low pork prices.
