On this day in vegan history · December 28, 2017
McDonald's Puts a Vegan Burger on the Everyday Menu
After a seven-week trial in one Finnish city sold out, the world's biggest burger chain did something it had never done: made a fully vegan burger a permanent, everyday menu item.
The facts
- Permanent launch
- December 28, 2017, in Sweden and Finland
- Trial run
- Seven weeks in Tampere, Finland, autumn 2017
- Rollout
- 210 McDonald's restaurants in Sweden, 60 in Finland
- Maker
- Anamma, a vegan brand of Orkla Foods Sverige, built the soy patty
On December 28, 2017, McDonald's began selling the McVegan, a soy-patty burger, as a permanent menu item in 210 restaurants across Sweden and 60 across Finland. The patty came from Anamma, a Swedish vegan food brand owned by Orkla Foods Sverige, which worked with McDonald's to build a soy-based burger that could hold up in a fast-food kitchen. The move followed a seven-week trial run that autumn in Tampere, Finland's second-largest city, that convinced McDonald's the demand was real rather than a novelty. It was not a limited-time promotion or a side item: for the first time, the McVegan sat on the standard menu next to the Big Mac, at a chain serving hundreds of thousands of customers a day.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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It is developed to be neutral and then it's possible to add on different flavours.
Henrik Eriksson, director of food solutions at Orkla Foods Sverige, on the McVegan patty, December 2017
Source: FoodNavigator -
Our ambition is that there should be something on our menu for all 400,000 guests visiting us every day.
Staffan Ekstam, McDonald's head of food strategy, on the McVegan launch, December 2017
Source: FoodNavigator
Why it still matters
It was the first time the world's largest burger chain treated a vegan burger as a normal, everyday choice rather than a trial balloon, proof that plant-based fast food could work at McDonald's scale, not just in specialty shops.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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