McDonald’s Canada testing a vegetable-based burger — again

McDonald’s Canada is trying again at a hamburger based on vegetables.

The Fast Food chain has announced Tuesday that he will tester his new McVeggie in some restaurants in Langley, Richmond and Surrey, BC, as well as Brampton and Windsor, Ontario, and Diepe, Moncton, Rivareview and Sussex, NB, until April 14.

The sandwich, which will arrive in regular and spicy varieties of habanero, has a cake of carrots, green beans, courgettes, peas, soybeans, broccoli and corn. It comes on a toasted sesame sandwich and is seasoned with grated lettuce and sauce.

The dish is the last attempt by McDonald’s Canada to woo uninterested or unable to consume popular elements such as the Big Mac.

The previous attempts to satisfy the vegetarians have not succeeded, leaving the sandwich part of the company’s menu full of beef and poultry options but little for those who do not eat meat.

The most recent menu item of the chain before the McVeggie was the plant, lettuce and tomato or PLT.

The sandwich made with a vegetable -based meat pan was tested in September 2019 in 28 restaurants, mainly in London, Ontario. Subsequently, you expanded to 52 offices covering the nearby Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph in a 12-week test starting from January 2020.

“It wasn’t exactly what consumers are looking for,” admitted Chief Marketing Officer by Francesca Cardarelli while she was sitting in a McDonald’s restaurant in Brampton, Ontario.

It is part of the reason why the PLT has lost its mark because its pie was designed to imitate meat since most of the hot vegetable -based meat alternatives have done about six years ago.

At the time, a Nielsen study revealed that 43 % of Canadian consumers expected to increase the consumption of vegetable -based foods and, in the previous two years, had purchased the meat in less than meat.

Supported by these reports and others that suggest that the vegetable -based “meat” market would be evaluated at $ 135 billion in the United States by 2035, fast food joints such as Tim Hortons and McDonald’s hurried to offer these products. However, the diners did not take them and in the end they were withdrawn from the menus due to the lack of question.

McVeggie tries to learn from all this.

“This is only something that is more robust and more desirable,” said Cardarelli, who said he eats two a week.

If someone has dietary restrictions or is looking for variety, he thinks that the charm of the dish is obvious as soon as he takes a bite from the sandwich and identifies the melange of a large vegetation that forms the cake.

“You can really see the vegetable component in it, which I think add a little liveliness and uniqueness from what we have tested in the past,” he said. “This is what they are looking for now.”

McVeggie differs from international options

Testing that theory will be the culmination of months of product development, study PLT feedback and examine McDonald vegetable products tested elsewhere.

India, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand have also sold sandwiches sometimes called McVeggie, but they are not the same as the offer of McDonald’s Canada, which was developed for this country in particular.

Sandwich, however, is not completely made with Canadian ingredients because Cardarelli said that the country’s climate makes “quite difficult” to get domestic products all year round. The company would not apply from which the countries other than Canada will get the vegetables.

The pressure to ensure that McVeggie is a success is high, not only for past failures, but because McDonald’s is about to conquer even more customers who may have eaten elsewhere due to the lack of vegetable -based options.

His research shows that about 35 % of the Canadians have a sort of limitation of food, whether it is an allergy or personal preference, and about half the times that a third determines where the group is having dinner, go to eat.

McDonald’s will look if the McVeggie moves this trend and analyze the frequency with which people enter for the sandwich, what they order with it and if it adapts to their routines.

“I hope they will hear the excitement and then gravitate to a product like this,” said Cardarelli.

“In the end, it will be their voice that will help us determine whether this is something bigger or not.”