Why McDonald's retain the 'Filet-O-Fish' on their menu
McDonald's is unquestionably the most popular fast food restaurant in the world. Each day, the restaurant serves about 1% of the world's population, which astonishingly is a near 70 million people. Interestingly, it is estimated that one-in-eight Americans have worked at a McDonald’s at some point in their early lives. Some famous alumni of McDonald’s include pop artist Shania Twain, Athlete Carl Lewis, Actress Sharon Stone and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to name a few.
Like most fast food restaurants, McDonald’s is not vegetarian-friendly although a vegetarian dining at one of their restaurants may consider french fries which is on the menu a hunger buster. Not really - especially in the US, where under ‘ingredients” it lists it as ‘beef flavoured’. Although McDonalds hasn’t clarified what that means, it makes it clear on their website that the fries are neither vegan nor vegetarian –friendly.
The fast food giant which prides itself on selling burgers with beef patties, chicken nuggets and fries astonishingly has one item that, surprise, surprise… is made of fish – its Filet-O-fish. How this fried fish sandwich made itself on to the menu dates back to over six decades ago, when Lou Groen opened his own franchised fast food outlet, which happened to be the first McDonald’s in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1959.
Business picked up promisingly, but there was one major problem. Unlike for the majority of restaurants, where the most popular days for dining out during the week begin on a Friday, his Friday’s turned out to be the slowest in the week. That’s because Groen’s McDonald’s was in an area which was predominantly (87%) Catholic and one must remember, that in the 1960’s, the majority of Catholics avoided eating meat on Fridays. This meant hardly any sales on what should have been one the busiest days of the week.
Racking his brain on how to attract customers on Friday’s, he looked around on how other ‘burger’ joints resolved the Friday dilemma. Discovering that a restaurant in down-town Cincinnati was serving a fish sandwich on Fridays, he included a fried halibut sandwich with tartar sauce on the menu. Pretty soon, business on Fridays picked up and Groen’s restaurant survived. To lower the price of the fish sandwich, the recipe was soon revised – replacing cod instead of halibut, with a slice of cheese to give it some zip.
The Filet-O-Fish recipe has taken some new turns since the 1960s, now using sustainable Alaskan Pollock in the US But it seems to be a permanent item on the McDonald’s menu as one of the only fish-friendly options. And even though meat-free Fridays aren’t practiced by most Catholics year-round, the fish alternative still seems to be important for religious customers. About 25% of McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish annual sales in the US are in the spring during Lent, when many Catholics choose not to eat land- or air-based meats.
The Atlantic-Pollock based lunch item is consumed at a rate of 300 million a year - 23 % of them are sold during Lent, and we can thank the Catholics in Ohio and a struggling businessman for the fast food classic.
One thing’s for sure, Filet –O- Fish won’t be going away any time soon.
Source: External
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