Almost every day we see adverts for new fast foods – a seasonal McFlurry flavour, a Starbucks pastry, a limited-edition burger – but some novel creations have shaken things up more than others. From avocado toast and matcha lattes to meatless chorizo and a sandwich-taco hybrid, we look at the most recent, mind-blowing menu changes at the world's biggest fast-food chains.
New sandwiches and desserts appear on Wendy’s menu every other week, but the announcement that the burger chain was changing its fry recipe for the first time in 10 years made us stop in our tracks. The new fries have now been rolled out globally. They're skin-on and covered in a type of batter that helps them stay crisp during delivery – a great reason to check out UberEats for lunch.
The Chinese-American chain is no stranger to plant-based dishes, with items such as aubergine tofu and vegetable spring rolls on its menu. However, it really ramped up its reputation as a veggie-friendly joint when it introduced Beyond Meat to its menu. The meat substitute was incorporated into a vegan version of one of the chain’s favourite dishes: Orange Chicken. Beyond the Original Orange Chicken was available at restaurants in New York and California for a limited time in 2021.
Answering calls from customers desperate for some more veggie options, McDonald’s launched the McPlant in the UK and Ireland in September 2021. It features a Beyond Meat patty, vegan bread bun, vegan burger sauce and vegan cheese, plus mustard, onion, tomato, pickles and lettuce. Unusually for such a divergent dish, it was made a permanent menu fixture.
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British bakery chain Greggs serves coffee, pastries and sandwiches, and is a lifesaver on busy mornings. Now it has followed up its successful Vegan Sausage Roll by extending its breakfast offering to include meat alternatives too. The Vegan Bacon Breakfast Roll – featuring smoky plant-based bacon strips inside a freshly baked roll – landed in stores in September 2021.
The All-Day Breakfast menu at McDonald’s in America was many customers' favourite thing about the chain. It featured Egg McMuffins, Hotcakes and Hash Browns when it first came into play and fans rejoiced at being able to get their favourite items after 11am. However, with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, it was removed to simplify operations. Now there are questions as to when and if it will return.
Spicy and smoky, chorizo has a seemingly unreplicable flavour. However, a plant-based version of the pork product was innovated and tested at Mexican fast-casual spot Chipotle in the US in August 2021. It's the first meat alternative at the chain since tofu sofritas was added in 2014, and you can enjoy the vegan sausage in a burrito, burrito bowl, taco or quesadilla.
Just this autumn the Cal-Mex chain surprised us with the launch of the Crispy Chicken Sandwich Taco. The intriguing item features fried chicken that’s marinated in jalapeño buttermilk, seasoned with Mexican-inspired spices and coated in a tortilla chip crumb. It’s served with a creamy chipotle sauce and jalapeño slices inside a fluffy bread shell. The chain poses the question: is it a sandwich or is it a taco? When it looks this delicious, we don’t think it matters.
In a bid to reduce customers’ meat intake and attract more veggie punters to the chain, Pizza Hut launched a Beyond Meat Pepperoni Pizza in five US cities including Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida, in August 2021. In the UK a similar pizza is already on offer: the cleverly named Vegan Pepperphoni, which debuted in January 2020.
One of the first fast food chains to embrace plant-based meat alternatives, Dunkin’ Donuts launched the Beyond Sausage Sandwich nationally at the end of 2019. The ultimate vegetarian breakfast dish, it featured a juicy plant-based patty, cooked egg and American cheese on a toasted English muffin. So it surprised us when it was removed from a number of the chain’s restaurants in June 2021 – going forward it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get hold of.
The meaty McRib has been on and off McDonald’s menus more times than we can count since its inception in 1981. Its elusiveness and the fact it's not even made of real ribs (just processed pork meat covered in barbecue sauce) has strangely made people even more attracted to it. So it’s no surprise that fans were extremely excited when it returned for the first time in nearly a decade in the US in December 2020.
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Different from its regular pizzas which feature a sizable crust, The Edge is a thin-crust pizza which has sauce and toppings all the way up to the perimeter. First launched in 1997, the retro dish made a comeback in four flavours including Pepperoni Lovers, The Vegetarian, The Carnivore and The Ultimate (pepperoni, Italian sausage, green peppers, onions and tomatoes) in June 2021.
The trendiest food of the last decade has officially gone mainstream as Dunkin’ Donuts has added Avocado Toast to its menu. Arriving in February 2021, the dish features a slice of toasted sourdough, avocado spread and Everything Bagel Seasoning. The breakfast dish is available to customers all day.
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We thought the Crispy Colonel Sandwich would be with us forever, but the original chicken chain decided to level up its offering in January 2021. Bigger and more brilliant, the KFC Chicken Sandwich features a double-breaded, extra-crispy chicken filet, thick pickle slices and classic or spicy mayo. But the pièce de résistance is its shiny, buttery brioche bun.
One of the biggest fast food launches of the year, the thick, rectangle-crust Detroit-Style Pizza arrived at Pizza Huts in the US in early 2021. The tantalizing menu, which sees sauce and toppings heaped on top of the cheese, won the hearts of the nation and sold out two weeks earlier than predicted. It was revived in August in three flavours: Double Pepperoni, Meaty Deluxe (bacon, Italian sausage and pepperoni) and Supremo (Italian sausage, red onions and green bell peppers).
The green tea powder is heralded for its health properties, so it was a surprise to see a fast food chain jumping on the matcha latte bandwagon in 2020. But it wasn’t just a phase destined to be forgotten a few months later. Due to the beverage’s popularity, Dunkin’ Donuts added even more matcha products in February 2021 including a Blueberry Matcha Latte and a matcha-topped doughnut.
As if Pizza Hut’s Italian Sausage pizza wasn’t good enough, the chain launched a meat-free version of the favourite in the US in November 2020. Made in partnership with Beyond Meat, it featured a tomato base, mozzarella and crumbles of Beyond Meat Italian Sausage. You would have been hard pressed to work out which was meaty and which was meat-free in a blind taste test.
When you were a child and went to McDonald’s you might have got a small burger, fries, milkshake, bag of cookies and a toy inside your Happy Meal. Well those days are no longer. In 2018 McDonald’s shocked customers by removing cheeseburgers and chocolate milk from its kids’ meal in the US in an attempt to make it healthier. Upset customers took to social media to show their dismay.
While fast food chains are rushing to introduce meatless options, Dunkin’ is doing the opposite. In February 2020 it launched the meaty menu item Snackin’ Bacon. Marketed as an afternoon snack, it’s wonderfully unexpected and perfect for those who love salty and savoury food. Then in August 2020 it launched Maple Sugar Snackin’ Bacon to appease the sweet-toothed among us.
Haven’t seen KFC’s signature potato wedges on its US menu in a while? That’s because in mid 2020 the chicken chain removed them to make way for Secret Recipe Fries. The replacement potato dish features rectangle fries dusted in the same 11 herbs and spices as its famous fried chicken. Many fans were upset by the move claiming if they wanted to taste chicken they’d buy chicken, and that skinny fries are readily available at many other chains.
In September 2019, Wendy's launched the Breakfast Baconator (a follow up to the Baconator) as the star item on its new nationwide breakfast menu. It features an egg, six strips of Applewood smoked bacon, a sausage patty, American cheese and cheese sauce. It quickly became one of the most coveted items to order during the pandemic.
To rival its iconic Stuffed Crust Pizza, Pizza Hut UK brought out Vegan Stuffed Crust Pizza in February 2020. To replicate the oozy, gooey texture of melted mozzarella it uses vegan cheese Violife. We challenge you to notice a difference between the two.
In the past, fast food chains such as KFC have been a destination for steadfast carnivores, but all that could be changing soon. In 2020 it trialled Beyond Fried Chicken – nuggets with the same crispy coating and taste as KFC Original Fried Chicken, but made with Beyond Meat plant-based protein. Now it has spoken about its ambition to create a faux meat version of its full-sized fried chicken pieces.
There was great news for UK-based vegetarians in January 2020: global sandwich chain Subway launched a plant-based version of its best-selling Meatball Marinara to mark “veganuary” (the annual challenge where people avoid eating meat in January). It's got same marinara sauce, but it's made with vegan meatballs and vegan mozzarella. What’s most surprising is it wasn’t just a PR stunt – nearly two years on, it’s still on the menu.
The chain famous for beef burgers and crinkle-cut fries threw us a curveball with its Korean menu launched in January 2021. The standout item was a Korean-Style Fried Chick’n Sandwich with spicy-sweet gochujang (a fermented chilli paste) and kimchi (fermented cabbage) slaw. It got a good reception, but sadly it was only available temporarily.
By now the major fast food chain’s menu feels pretty established. Which is why it was a surprise when it launched three new chicken sandwiches in the US in January 2021: the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, Deluxe Chicken Sandwich and the most adventurous option, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. It likely felt pressure to keep up with new additions from its competitors (think Popeyes and Wendy’s). One thing is clear though: chicken sandwiches are the future.
Another casualty of Taco Bell streamlining its menu in September 2020, the Mexican Pizza featured two hard tortillas with refried beans, seasoned ground beef and Mexican sauce in the middle – cheese, tomatoes and Mexican sauce were heaped on top to make a quesadilla-pizza hybrid. The fan favourite enjoyed a mammoth 32-year run, but was eventually cut because of its environmental impact.
The introduction of Popeyes Chicken Sandwich at the end of 2019 was so groundbreaking it’s all fast-food fans could talk about. Before the new burger arrived on the menu, Chick-fil-A could sleep easy. But, when the sellout sandwich – featuring a crispy fried chicken breast, pickles, mayo or spicy Cajun sauce, and a brioche bun – was rolled out, it triggered a Twitter storm involving fast-food heavyweights including Chick-fil-A and Wendy's.
This year, fast food has gone crispy chicken crazy. First McDonald’s launched three chicken sandwiches, then KFC launched a new chicken sandwich, now this: Little Caesars is testing Crispy Chicken Pizzas with white sauce. The offering includes BBQ, Buffalo, Garlic Parm and Naked. Sadly, you have to be at a restaurant in Tennessee to get your hands on one.
Are Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes your go-to side when you’re at Taco Bell? Ours too. So it was a surprise when the Cal-Mex chain announced it was cutting the humble spud from its menu in July 2020, upsetting customers in the process. Happily, Taco Bell shocked us even more by doing a U-turn on its decision and bringing back Fiesta Potatoes (and the axed Spicy Potato Soft Taco) in March 2021.
The first-ever flavour variation for McNuggets since they debuted in 1983, Spicy Chicken McNuggets were added to the menu temporarily at McDonald’s restaurants in the US in August 2020 and again in February 2021. Though the chain isn’t known for spiciness, the chicken bites were seasoned with both cayenne and chilli pepper, and served with Mighty Hot Sauce. It's a popular item, so hopefully it might just be made permanent next time.
Feeling hungry? Check out fast food favourites you can easily recreate at home