What to know

Who Remembers The McDonald’s Pizza?

McPizza McDonald's pizzas from the 80s pizza

Believe it or not, McDonald’s has experimented with more than just burgers and nuggets, like the 80s McPizza.

It is not secret that McDonald’s is the biggest and most popular fast food chain in the world. The name alone stands for many things, Ronald McDonald and his friends, big golden arches, the Happy Meal, the BigMac, but despite there once being a McPizza, pizza is not one of them.

Despite owning much of the market back in the 80s, McDonald’s found themselves missing one category of eaters – the diners.

The issue was clear and simple, people didn’t regards burgers as a dinner meal but a lunch meal instead.

To attract people over dinner, they tapped into America’s biggest dinner market, which was pizzas. The McPizza wasn’t the product to that however.

That name was given to a short-lived calzone-style product in in the 80s, which was designed to be eaten on the go.

When the McPizza failed, it was clear that McDonald’s had to make real pizzas if they wanted to enter the growing pizza industry.

Over the next few years, the company worked on developing a quick-cook over that could defrost a frozen pizza and cook it in just under six minutes. But this meant that restaurants had to remodel their kitchens to include new, large equipment.

Another problem was drive-thru pizzas. Their family sized pizzas were simply too large to fit through most of the drive-thru windows, which was very inconvenient.

Sadly, the McDonald’s pizzas never made it past trial period and was offered only at select restaurants across the US before being dropped altogether.

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