McDonald's Hula Burger Was A Massive Flop: Here's How Few Were Actually Sold

For every legendary fast food item, there's a graveyard of other failed innovative attempts. Take, for example, McDonald's bizarre Hula Burger. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it was a dismal flop. But its failure paved the way for the success of one of McDonald's signature non-burger items, the Filet-O-Fish.

This head-scratching concoction of a fast food sandwich, which was just a slice of grilled pineapple and melted cheese on a bun, goes all the way back to 1962. Cincinnati-based McDonald's franchisee, Lou Groen, had come up with the basic idea of a breaded whitefish sandwich to cater to Roman Catholic diners during the Lenten season, but McDonald's founder Ray Kroc wasn't so convinced that the fish sandwich was a good idea. So Kroc made a proposition: On one Friday, when Catholic diners were generally avoiding meat, Kroc would try selling his decidedly unique Hula Burgers while Groen would sell his Filet-O-Fish. 

Kroc placed a side wager with his grill operator, Fred Turner, that if his Hula Burger outsold the Filet-O-Fish, Turner would owe him a new suit. After the day was over, however, Kroc would end up owing Turner a new suit because the Filet-O-Fish outsold the Hula Burger by an incredible 350 orders to a puny six. McDonald's added the Filet-O-Fish to its permanent menu in 1965, the first addition to McDonald's original menu in its entire history.

Because the Hula Burger's foray into the world was a disaster, there's very little photographic evidence that it even existed. However, social media fast food influencer Bill Oakley once managed to get some of the few photos of it being served by Fred Turner himself straight from McDonald's mysterious archives. (Full disclosure: Bill Oakley is a good friend of mine.)

The photos show Fred Turner wearing white gloves and surrounded by pineapples, ostensibly handing out the sandwiches at a McDonald's location. Imagine being served a grilled pineapple with a slice of cheese on it on a bun, via white glove service. And from the future McDonald's CEO himself as Turner would eventually go from a Hula Burger flipper to McDonald's CEO. But let's play the more obvious scenario: If something like fruit and processed cheese on bread sounds bizarre to you, customers in test markets must have felt the same way back then too. And imagine what would have happened if the Filet-O-Fish failed instead. What an alternate fast food universe that'd have been.