Dive Brief:
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McDonald's famously secret sauces will be available to Canadians at grocery stores this spring. The sauces will be available for the Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, and McChicken.
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There is no word whether the condiments will be available to shoppers in the United States, or at what price the bottles will retail for in Canada.
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In the past, McDonald's distributed bottles of the Big Mac sauce across the United States. The company’s executive chef demonstrated in a 2012 YouTube video how you can make the iconic sauce.
Dive Insight:
McDonald's “special sauce,” long a top-secret recipe you could only sample after buying one of their sandwiches, has gone commercial. The restaurant giant has admitted its ingreidents for the Big Mac are mayo, sweet pickle relish, yellow mustard, onion powder, white wine vinegar, garlic powder, and paprika, but the company appears to be setting its sights on selling this and two of its other sauces in the grocery store.
McDonald's is hardly the first, and undoubtedly the last, restaurant to try to sell its goods in a grocery store. Bob Evans, TGI Fridays, Famous Dave's, Jamba Juice, among others, have all looked for other sources of revenue by selling popular items outside of their initial venue.
It's possible McDonald's is using Canada to test the rollout before deciding whether to enter the U.S. At the end of the day, it's just another product that will be fighting for shelf space. Grocery stores will only keep and give it prime real estate if consumers load their carts up with it. McDonald's has the name advantage to help it move into the grocery store, but unless it sells the shelf life could be short lived.