Big Changes That You'll See At McDonald's In 2025

2024 was quite the whirlwind year for McDonald's: The McRib and Boo Buckets returned, The Chicken Big Mac, Grandma McFlurry, and Anime-inspired dipping sauces debuted to happy mouths, and nostalgia was served in a series of Collectors' Cups, which highlighted the chain's colorful and fun history. Not everything was pure joy however, with a serious E. coli outbreak from Quarter Pounders pounding bad PR for the Golden Arches. And yet, with the lure of low-priced value meal deals, the blowback was softened a bit with customers still more than willing to come in to order up their go to McFavorites.

So where does McDonald's go from here, in the following year? Yes, we're sure there will be plenty of new savory and sweet sandwiches, drinks, and desserts to scarf down, and cool Happy Meal toys that both the young and old will want to snap up, but what will actually happen in 2025? The Takeout peered into the McCrystal ball and we're happy to report that we see a lot of big changes for the chain, with an expansion of both the menu, as well as its footprint around the globe. Pull up a cheeseburger stool and enjoy the McFuture that is unfolding right now.

In 2006, McDonald's was selling over 600 million pounds of chicken a year, and upped that number even more with the introduction of its new Snack Wrap. This quick bite item consisted of a single fried chicken tender, wrapped up in a tortilla alongside lettuce, cheddar jack cheese, and ranch sauce, and cost just $1.29. Customers were eating them up so much that additional flavors were added, including a Big Mac-like one. By 2014, in an effort to slim down its menu, and because it took too long for employees to prepare the wraps, the flavors were narrowed down back to a single option. Within two years, they were removed from menus, much to the dismay of their McFans.

At the tail end of 2023, there was light shed in the dark tunnel of the McDonald's wrap void when the company hinted at them returning at some point in the near future. That news got a lot brighter when Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald's USA, appeared on the December 5, 2024 episode of "Good Morning America" to reveal a big tease. Erlinger point-blank said, "The Snack Wrap will be back in 2025." He added, "It had a cult following ... I get so many emails into my inbox about this product — it will be back." As to exactly when, that's a secret he's keeping, to keep his competitors at bay.

It's been said that three is the magic number, but for buying a meal, $5 seems about as low as it could go for a meal in 2024. Fast food chains like Burger King, Hardee's, and Dairy Queen enticed customers with new value meals at around that price point, and McDonald's joined the fray on June 25, 2024 with the introduction of its $5 Meal Deal at many of its locations. The deal allowed customers to pick between a McDouble hamburger or McChicken, to pair with small fries, four-piece Chicken McNuggets, and a small soft drink of their choosing.

While this limited time deal was only meant to last a month, it proved to be such a lure for customers that a large majority of McDonald's owners voted to extend it until the end of summer. The deal may have not exactly been a moneymaker for franchisees, just like what Subway did with its mandated footlong deals, but it helped keep consumers from dining at competitors' restaurants. Still, by fall, owners again voted to keep the $5 Meal Deal going through the end of the year.

In November, McDonald's announced a new McValue platform for 2025, which included the $5 Meal Deal. The $5 Meal Deal will now hang around at participating locations until at least summer 2025. If the longevity and popularity of the $1 any-size drinks is any indication, the $5 Meal Deal could last years.

With prices of food continuing to skyrocket, and even injecting itself into the 2024 Presidential race, consumers have continued to seek low-priced value options wherever they can. This has constantly been on the radar of McDonald's, which has for a while been offering up local deals, exclusive deals through its app, and the introduction of its $5 Meal Deal. In 2025, the chain is expanding upon these money saving options available to consumers with its new McValue Platform, which launches January 7, 2025. In a press release, McDonald's president said, "When it comes to value, we know there's no one-size-fits-all. We've worked closely with our franchisees to create a new platform that will let our customers define value on their own terms."

In addition to the existing offerings, a new option, called "Buy One, Add One for $1" is joining the team. The deal is simply spelled out right in its title, but the only caveat is that the second item chosen has to be of equal or lesser value than the first. During breakfast hours, the items available for this deal are Sausage McMuffin, Sausage Biscuit, Sausage Burrito, and Hash Browns. For the rest of the day and night, an order of six-piece Chicken McNuggets, Double Cheeseburger, McChicken, or Small Fries are the initial offerings. Availability and cost of the items will vary by location, as franchisees can set their own pricing.

McDonald's attempted to freshen up its mornings by pushing baked good options like muffins, cinnamon rolls, and pull-apart doughnuts through its McCafé platform, but started to phased it out in 2023. Looking to give its customers something new to nosh on, alongside its cups of coffees, McDonald's opened its doors to freshly made doughnuts crafted by Krispy Kreme for a limited-test run that started in October 2022. At first, only nine Louisville, Kentucky area stores offered up all day classic Krispy Kreme flavors, including Original Glazed, Chocolate Iced with Sprinkles, and Raspberry Filled. The program went well enough that within four months, it expanded to 160 locations within the same test market.

In March 2024, the partnership was further cemented when McDonald's and Krispy Kreme jointly announced plans to offer nationwide availability of the doughnuts by the end of 2026. In a press release, Krispy Kreme president and CEO, Josh Charlesworth, said, "Significantly, by making Krispy Kreme accessible to fans nationwide through this partnership, we expect to more than double our points of access by the end of 2026. The partnership accelerates the development of our existing Delivered Fresh Daily channel, creating operating leverage through distribution density and production utilization."

In the fall of 2024, McDonald's expanded its Krispy Kreme footprint to the Chicago and Northeast Ohio markets, offering doughnuts in 1,000 restaurants. The goal for 2025 is further expansion, adding 5,000 restaurants to the mix, and 6,000 more in the following year.

It was actually the sale of a milkshake machine to the original McDonald's brothers that brought future franchise mastermind Ray Kroc into the story. Today, the chain offers up a slew of dairy desserts such as ice cream cones, sundaes, and McFlurries. However, there has often been one thing standing in the way of enjoying any of them — notoriously and seemingly endless broken ice cream machines.

The reason why seemed to be a mystery for ages, but it turns out that the only officially licensed company allowed to fix the broken machines was the company that manufactures them — Taylor. This led to a backlog of repair requests and delays in getting them fixed. While third parties have tried to help fix them, they were thwarted by McDonald's and Taylor from doing so.

In March 2024, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission stepped in to try and remedy this ice cream-demic. The two encouraged the U.S. Copyright Office to make an exemption for third parties to be able access copyrighted software to help in repairs. Just in time for Halloween, the Copyright Office adopted the regulation, which went into effect immediately, and thus setting a new course for smoothing sailing with ice cream machines at McDonald's. The website McBroken.com keeps an unofficial tally of down ice cream machines in the U.S. As of December 2024, over 14% of them were broken, with the largest concentration in New York. Hopefully by the end of 2025, that percentage will be close to zero.

In 1996, McDonald's attempted to upscale its offerings with a new "Deluxe" line, including a fried chicken breast sandwich called the Crispy Chicken Deluxe. Similar chicken sandwiches with variations in naming conventions followed in the ensuing decades. The latest iteration is called the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, which dropped in early 2021 to compete in a war with Popeyes and Chick-fil-A's own. The name "McCrispy" has been officially floating in the McDonald's orbit since it filed a trademark for it back in 1999, and was used as the product name for this latest sandwich in Canada and the U.K. Two years after its overly successful launch, the American one was renamed the McCrispy, and even gained new flavor options.

By 2024, chicken sales were flying so high that they were actually on par with beef product sales at McDonald's. The McCrispy was and remains a big part of that drive, being sold in 70 markets around the world by the end of the year. Per Fox Business, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinksi said its plan is to "scale the McCrispy equity across nearly all our markets by the end of 2025." The McCrispy is not only expanding its availability, but branching out into additional products, with wraps and tenders as possible new ways to enjoy the fried chicken.

In addition to the launch of the Crispy Chicken Deluxe in 1996, McDonald's also offered up a more adult, jazzed-up burger that went by the name of the Arch Deluxe. It didn't catch on, but the "Arch" name got a new product lifeline in 2024 when The Big Arch started making the rounds in select test markets.

If the Big Mac didn't seem like a handful already, The Big Arch seeks to up the ante, with two quarter pound beef patties hanging out with three slices of white cheese, crispy onions, slivered onions, pickles, and lettuce, slathered with a new tangy Big Arch sauce. In a 2024 Q2 earnings call, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said, "It's a quintessential McDonald's burger with a twist on our iconic familiar flavors."

The Big Arch's trial is currently being held in three markets: Canada, Portugal, and Germany, where it goes by the name Der M. In the short window since its launch, McDonald's has already been encouraged by the response it has seen from its happy customers in these diverse markets. In a Q3 earnings call, Kempczinski added, "we'll work with franchisees and partners to deploy the Big Arch faster into more international markets in 2025." Here's hoping one of those markets is the United States. We'll be ready for it, with wide-open hands.

While the public will see an expansion of the McDonald's menu, and new value options coming in 2025, some will see more locations sprouting up near them. As of 2024, there are over 38,000 locations in over 100 countries and territories, with the company's goal to get to 50,000 by the end of 2027.

2024 marked McDonald's 50th year in the United Kingdom, and it is looking to further increase its number of stores from 1,500 to 1,700 by 2028. Expansion in India has risen rapidly in the past few years, which is impressive considering a majority of the country doesn't eat beef. In its second largest city, Kolkata, the locations will double in 2025 to at least 16. Australia is aiming to hit 1,100 locations by then too. As of September 2024, China has over 6,500 stores in operation, making it the second largest market in the world, with no signs of slowing down. The magic number for locations there is 10,000 by 2028. Even Disneyland Paris' Disney Village will be getting a brand new McDonald's.

Expansion is also occurring domestically as well in 2025. The Houston, Texas suburb of Katy has two new locations in the works, and one will soon be popping up in Brownsville, Texas and Vigo County, Indiana. San Antonio will not only get a new McDonald's, but also two new locations of its offshoot concept CosMc's are in the works.

Long gone at McDonald's are the days of clamshell containers holding burgers, and Styrofoam cups filled to the brim with super hot coffee. The former was phased out in 1990, and the latter in 2013, and the corporation has continued to make strides on becoming a more sustainable one ever since. In 2018, McDonald's set the ambitious goal that by the end of 2025, 100% of guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources, and that recycling will be available at all restaurants. It also pledged to better source ingredients, and reduce plastic use in Happy Meal toys.

With 2025 no longer a distant year in the future, McDonald's is actually close to meeting some of its goals. In the U.S., all eggs used for breakfast items are 100% cage-free. By the end of 2023, it had already met 86.7% of its goal of utilizing primary guest packaging from renewable, recycled, or certified sources, which includes the recent introduction of the four-flap McFlurry cup that eliminates the need for plastic lids. Also, 88.3% of restaurants in markets with advanced infrastructure offer the option to recycle and/or compost packaging items, and a 63.7% reduction of virgin fossil fuel-based plastic in Happy Meal toys.

McDonald's Philippines has taken things even further with its Green & Good initiative. Some locations opened under this initiative include using recycled steel, recycled plastic for walkways and walls, solar rooftops and lampposts, rainwater harvesting tanks, and even bike and dine repair stations for cyclists.