Review: McDonald's Snack Wraps Make A Triumphant And Tasty Return

Long an inexpensive, satisfying, and nutritionally balanced mini-meal, the original McDonald's Snack Wrap consisted of a chicken strip, lettuce, and cheese encased in a flour tortilla. The fast food giant scrubbed the Snack Wrap from its menu in 2016, prompting fans to petition for the return of the item in some way. Even McDonald's franchisees wanted the Snack Wrap back. Now, after years of exploring possibilities and tentatively teasing diehards about the return of the distantly discontinued menu item, McDonald's actually brought back the Snack Wrap to its U.S. stores.

Technically, McDonald's revived the underlying concept of the Snack Wrap — a single breaded and fried chicken strip inside a tortilla, with condiments — which it's now executing in two whole new ways. The Ranch Snack Wrap and Spicy Snack Wrap both hit thousands of McDonald's stores in July 2025. After letting every other chain steal its best idea, McDonald's is back to reclaim the crown as the champion of the snackable, miniature, no-fuss chicken sandwich. Here's everything you need to know about the new and possibly improved McDonald's Snack Wraps, including how they hold up in a taste test.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

While the McDonald's Snack Wrap of the past sought to replicate a simple build of a chicken sandwich (with bun jettisoned in favor of a flour tortilla), in 2025, the wraps are just a bit elevated from the normal value menu fare. The Snack Wrap will be henceforth available in two varieties, while both work from the same foundation. Each wrap begins with a soft tortilla into which is placed a single new recipe McCrispy Strip, a breaded and boneless long chicken chunk made entirely from juicy white meat, along with a generous helping each of shredded lettuce and shredded cheddar cheese.

Then the wraps start to differentiate themselves. The Spicy Snack Wrap is made fiery with the addition of a hot, peppery sauce made from the flavorful and heat-packing habanero pepper. The Ranch Snack Wrap is as smooth, creamy, and cooling as the Spicy Snack Wrap is boldly hot. It gets those traits from a large dollop of smooth and savory ranch dressing kicked up with notes of onion and garlic.

While McDonald's is giving the Snack Wrap a big marketing push right in the middle of summer, this isn't a seasonal, or limited-time-only affair. McDonald's has confirmed that after an absence of nearly nine years, the return of the Snack Wrap will be a permanent addition, and it will be sold on its lunch and dinner menu indefinitely. The McDonald's Snack Wrap revival starts on July 10, 2025, with the beginning of the chain's lunch hours — 10:30 a.m. in most places. 

Both the Spicy Snack Wrap and the Ranch Snack Wrap can be ordered individually, or as part of a combo meal (which consists of two wraps, fries, and a soft drink). Prices on the combo vary by location, but a single Snack Wrap of either variant will cost around $2.99, not counting any applicable taxes. All those parameters are in place no matter where McDonald's customers order their Snack Wraps, be it at the counter, in the Drive-Thru lane, or via the McDonald's smartphone app.

The Spicy Snack Wrap from McDonald's presents exactly as promised: It's a hot little number. The proprietary habanero sauce, a reddish-orange mayonnaise-type dressing, is extremely flavorful, with a natural and fresh taste not generally associated with fast food condiments. At first, it's altogether sweet and tangy before it unleashes a surprising wallop of spiciness. And yet, all those layers don't at all overpower the Snack Wrap's star, a single McCrispy chicken strip — rather, they enhance it. Made from dense, meaty, and chewy white meat only, it's breaded lightly, with a coating that lets the chicken flavor shine through while contributing just enough crunch, savoriness, and oiliness. The strip tastes homemade and pan-fried.

The sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese and lettuce couldn't really be detected in the Spicy Snack Wrap, both in terms of taste and texture. Probably used for bulk or visual flair, they aren't really necessary and don't add much to the already pleasant interior. The tortilla wrapping was warm and chewy, as it should be.

A chicken strip aggressively dipped in ranch dressing is a common thing, and often a very good thing, provided that both elements are up to snuff. McDonald's Ranch Snack Wrap replicates the experience of a chicken strip dipped in ranch, and while the McCrispy strip is one of the best poultry items in fast food to debut in recent memory, its best qualities are drowned out by a ranch dressing that just can't contend with such a high-quality counterpart. The dressing used in the Snack Wrap is very sweet, and the promised notes of onion and garlic don't really make themselves known underneath all that sweetness. It does, however, offer a good level of creaminess and thickness. It also helps out the chicken with the suggestion of buttermilk, often used in dredging fried chicken.

The crispy strip gets bogged down in sauce and doesn't stand up to the condiment the way that it does with the habanero topping in the Spicy Snack Wrap. That being said, if someone likes their chicken strips or nuggets slathered in dipping sauces, particularly ranch dressing, this wrap is going to become a new favorite. It's very saucy and it makes chicken dipping very convenient the way it stuffs everything — including some welcome crunchy lettuce for another level of texture — into a strong, chewy, and mildly flavorful tortilla.

McDonald's began selling its new and revived Snack Wraps on July 10, 2025, and The Takeout was sent one of each variety — the Spicy Snack Wrap and the Ranch Snack Wrap — for review, as arranged by the fast food chain's public relations firm. Acquired just after McDonald's lunch hours began at 10:30 a.m., the wraps were photographed and then sampled by The Takeout. Each wrap was judged on its own merits, and against the press materials, in terms of taste, texture, quality of the chicken used, and the promised heat of the habanero sauce and flavorful coolingness of the ranch dressing used respectively in the Spicy and Ranch iterations.

The McDonald's Snack Wraps were also judged on whether the ingredients worked together as a crafted dish, whether the sauces enhanced the chicken, if the chicken stood up to the condiments and remained juicy and crispy, and if they were all handled well by the tortilla, rated on its chewiness, stability, and freshness.