This past weekend, in Fast Food Week, we spotlighted the not-so-coincidental reappearance of the legendary McRib sandwich at McDonalds, just when Arby’s launched its new Country Rib ‘real’ rib sandwich. Now, another legendary sammy is back for a month, reigniting an old controversy…
The notoriuos KFC Double Down: Back for a limited time – under suspicious circumstances…
McD’s gives Arby’s a Ribbing
October is Trick-or-Treat month, and it looks like McDonald’s is trying to slip a lump of coal into Arby’s Hallowe’en goodie bag, bringing back its controversial McRib sandwich to steal the thunder of Arby’s Country Rib sandwich launch.
The McRib has always been a love-it-or-hate-it menu item, with McFans deeply divided over its merits versus its …demerits. Those who hate it point to its composition: the pork equivalent of ‘pink slime’, the mechanically de-boned chicken used in McNuggets. But supporters say the flavour – particularly the BBQ sauce – is great, and the fact that the pork is conveniently boneless cannot be given short shrift. The bottom line is, bringing back the McRib at this crucial juncture is probably a stunt designed to deflect attention from, and inject noise into the Arby’s launch.
Yah. The Fast Food sector is cutthroat. Profit margins are paper thin, and making decent money demands that the big chains sell millions of any given menu item per year. Preferably per month. Which brings me to the totally-unexpected return of the KFC Double Down.
A ‘Stunt Sandwich’
Let me preview my comments on the KFC Double Down by passing on to you the observation by another food blogger that the DD has never been anything more than a ‘Stunt Sandwich’. That is, it was always intended to reside in that extreme niche of the Fast Food biz as the hot-pepper-eating challenges, 5-pound burritos and multi-patty monster burgers we hear about every now and then. Not to mention the absurd KFC chicken sandwich that used glazed doughuts as buns.
The idea was to make a bold statement, and generate noise for the brand. Positive noise or negative noise, it didn’t matter. Just get folks talking abut KFC. And it did.
Some folks absolutely loved the idea of a chicken sandwich that used two boneless breast fillets – hand-breaded and deep-fried with the Colonel’s trademark 11 herbs and spices – as ‘bun’ halves, bracketing bacon, cheese and sauce. For them, indulgence was the game, and KFC was the name.
Others, however, called the the DD a dietary disaster – with its 1880 mg of sodium (The American Heart Association recommends a total daily intake of just 1500 mg), 37 mg of fat, 150 mg of cholesterol and 610 Calories. Eater (in a 2010 review, when the DD first came out) featured an array of capsule reviews, both good and bad. The Salon review took exception to the sandwich’s inherent inconvenience, but had more-damning things to say, in its own gentle way: “[A]side from greasier-than-normal fingers, it kind of doesn’t work.”
But Stuff came down in defense of the DD, saying it wasn’t any worse than many other extreme Fast Food menu items we’ve seen designed to make a stunt statement – witness the likes of the Burger King Triple Whopper and the Quadruple Big Mac…
So, why bring back the DD now?
Long story short: KFC doesn’t sell pork. And they might have been just a tad jealous that the Rib People were getting so much ‘noise’.
And the folks there couldn’t have helped but notice that the DD made a comeback (for a limited time, of course) in the UK earlier this year. And more recently, it showed up again for a month in a couple of Asian markets. And that generated a lot of chatter among food bloggers (yours truly included) who wondered aloud when it would show its greasy face here in North America again.
What better time than the present? I’ll bet the KFC marketing folks are literally clucking with glee…
~ Maggie J.