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photo: GETTY IMAGES (MCRIB) OVERVIEW McDonald’s offers the McRib sandwich in different cities at different times, rarely for longer than a few weeks The elusiveness of the sandwich has created a fan base of people who crave it and go to great lengths to find one Pent-up demand for the McRib helps stimulate sales at McDonald’s, whose business depends on demonstrating strong sales growth LINKS McDonald's Intends to Raise Prices Wealthy Take Bigger Bite of Fast Food
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The Elusive McRib
By JULIE JARGON
AND DAVID KESMODEL Before traveling to visit his parents in Nebraska last winter, Jeremy Duensing did what he always does before a trip: check the “McRib Locator” website. To his delight, he found a McDonald’s restaurant near Omaha that, unlike most of the burger chain’s 14,000 U.S. outlets, had the McRib on its menu. Once he got there, he bought six of the pork sandwiches, ate one right away at the restaurant, and carried the rest home to Burnsville, Minn., in a cooler. “Either you find places that have them or you’re out of luck for the rest of the year,” says Mr. Duensing.
NO RIBS The McRib actually has nothing to do with ribs. It’s a boneless pork patty molded into the shape of a rib slab and adorned with pickles, onions and barbecue sauce on a bun. The sandwich made its debut in 1981. But McRibs are almost never available at all McDonald’s restaurants at the same time. Instead, McDonald’s offers them in different cities at different times, rarely for longer than a few weeks. That has created a fan base of people who go to considerable lengths to munch on a McRib. Ryan Dixon of Burbank, Calif., once drove 10 hours to Medford, Ore., after hearing that a McDonald’s there was selling the sandwich. “It has a ghostly quality,” says Mr. Dixon, a 30-year-old graphic novelist. “You don’t know when it will appear.” In November, for the first time in 16 years, McDonald offered the McRib at outlets across the U.S., but even then, it was only for six weeks or so. “It doesn’t sell well all year long because people get tired of it,” says McDonald’s USA President Jan Fields. For McDonald’s, with about $23 billion in annual revenue, these sorts of limited-time promotions might be considered a drop in the bucket. But every sale counts in a business that demands month after month of strong sales growth. “A tenth of a [percentage] point in sales at McDonald’s is a lot of money,” says Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president for WD Partners, a restaurant design and development firm. “There’s a certain percentage of people, when a product is not available, that crave it, and for the short amount of time that it’s available again, it stimulates traffic.” THE FAMILY BUSINESS Alan Klein’s obsession with the McRib began when he was growing up on a hog farm in South Dakota. The 28-year-old meteorologist, who now lives in Minnesota, justified his craving by saying that eating McRibs supported the family business. After moving to Minnesota for college, he had trouble finding McRibs. Five years ago, he visited South Dakota and saw the sandwich at a McDonald’s near his childhood home. “It rekindled my love of McRibs and made me start thinking it would be nice to know where they were,” he says. Three years ago, he launched the McRib Locator at www.kleincast.com. Visitors can inquire about and report McRib sightings. Mr. Klein says he gets 300 to 400 hits a week. Posted sightings aren’t always reliable. Tom Russomano of Morristown, N.J., has tried unsuccessfully for five years to track down the sandwich, and says he has encountered several “false positives” on the McRib Locator. Last spring, Mr. Russomano took a train to New York where a McDonald’s reportedly was selling the McRib, only to leave empty-handed and dejected. “The only reason I would ever set foot in a McDonald’s is for the McRib,” he says.
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