- McDonald's Signature Crafted line of burgers is the chain's attempt at premium "better burgers."
- The premium lineup is helping McDonald's sales numbers, executives said on an earnings call in April.
- We compared the burgers with those at two other major "better burger" chains, Shake Shack and Five Guys, and found they held their own in terms of quality.
McDonald's attempt to latch on to the "better burger" trend is yielding decent results.
In the company's earnings call in April, McDonald's CFO Kevin Ozan said sales were buoyed in part by the chain's Signature Crafted line of premium burgers, which cost about $1 to $2 more than the rest of McDonald's burger menu.
After an experiment with a customizable-burger program a few years ago proved unsuccessful, McDonald's tweaked it and retained several premium options: a garlic white cheddar burger, a pico guacamole burger, and a sweet barbecue bacon burger.
These burgers also use fresh beef patties, a very recent change to McDonald's long-standing and often maligned practice of using frozen patties.
That could reasonably put McDonald's in the same league as other national chains offering fresh-grilled, premium, burgers — namely, Shake Shack and Five Guys.
So we decided to compare McDonald's better-burger lineup with its competition to see whether it has staying power in the industry — and we were surprised by what we found.
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McDonald's fancy burgers come in fancy branded boxes to distinguish them from your de rigueur Quarter Pounders.
First is the pico guacamole burger.
It's slathered with pico de gallo and guacamole, hence the name. The brioche bun is a regular on the premium lineup, and frankly, it is much better than the typical McDonald's sesame bun.
The burger is decent. The veggie-heavy ingredients are surprisingly fresh and vibrant.
The pico de gallo has firm, fleshy diced tomato and sharp onions, and the guacamole is better than you'd expect from McDonald's.
This burger comes with a lime wedge in the box — it seems incongruous at first, but the acidic sharpness of the lime juice goes a long way to cut through the mellowness of this burger.
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