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8 Bizarre McDonald’s Menu Items That Failed

Lobster, pizza, and more

Grant Piper
6 min readApr 2, 2022
Photo by Shahbaz Ali on Unsplash

Fast food restaurants do not run on very large margins. That means that in order to turn a profit fast food joints have to sell a lot of hamburgers. But customers are always looking for the next best thing. This combination of poor margins and searching for the next hot food item has led McDonald’s to test some truly bizarre menu items.

If a food item doesn’t sell well the profit will quickly drop to zero leaving many experimental menu items heading for the trash bin. Here are 8 strange menu items rolled out at McDonald’s that quickly failed.

1. McLobster

In 1993, McDonald’s rolled out its McLobster sandwich. The McLobster featured seasonal lobster, lettuce, and a special sauce stuffed into a hotdog bun. If you don’t equate lobster with McDonald’s you are not the only one. The item rolled out with much skepticism. Fast food seafood is already a hard sell and fast food lobster was no different.

The McLobster did not sell well outside of certain areas and quickly become unprofitable. McDonald’s also supposedly ran into issues with the supply of fresh lobster which only exasperated the cost issues. The McLobster was quickly discontinued but can still be found at select locations in New England during the summer months.

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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