Burger King's 'New' Menu Item Rewards Our Indecision

When a fast food chain wants to lure a surge of customers through the door (or the drive-thru lane), it has a few options: Roll out an all-new menu item, reintroduce a bygone favorite, or simply smoosh existing menu items together in a novel way. McDonald's has long been a champion of the latter approach, not only by hyping celebrity meals, but also a "hackable" menu that didn't bring anything new to the table, but was nevertheless fun to play around with. Now Burger King plans to do the same, with a new permanent menu item: a side that combines fries with onion rings.

The new so-called Have-sies will roll out to Burger King locations nationwide on October 12, and the press release notes the menu item is designed to alleviate "the frustration of picking just one side," an admittedly relatable predicament. The name "Have-sies" is a play on the brand's slogan, "Have It Your Way," but I don't think the average customer will understand the reference at all, much less deign to say this cutesy name to a cashier. BK has inelegantly wedged its branding into a menu item before, renaming its Hand-Breaded Crispy Chicken Sandwich the "Ch'King" before quickly pivoting to "BK Royal Crispy Chicken." It's all a little clunky, but hey, we already know that an order of Have-sies tastes good.

In fact, although Have-sies is a "new" nationwide release, Burger King customers have long had the ability to combine fries and onion rings as a single side. Back in 2021 we noted that popular blog #HackTheMenu had a whole entry on Frings, available wherever benevolent BK employees are willing to accommodate the request. Also in 2021, Burger King Canada rolled out the Franken Whopper for Halloween, featuring fries and onion rings piled atop the chain's signature burger.

Now, if you're like us, one immediate concern might come to the fore: If onion rings and fries are sharing the same container, there might be far less than half of each going into the sleeve. Onion rings, after all, take up kind of a lot of room, and shoving fried toruses in among the more cuboid french fries might result in a perilously scant amount of each. Let's hope there's some sort of plan in place for that, or the entire value proposition of Have-sies goes out the window. (I truly hope we're not the only ones who think like this.)

Have-sies will be available as an a la carte side in small, medium, and large sizes, or they can be ordered as part of a combo meal.