McDonald's New Fall Menu Items: Great Concept, Lousy Execution

Where Are We, East Berlin?
It was cold outside, 28 degrees cold, as I pulled into the McDonald's parking lot at 6:00 AM.  And it was cold inside too; it always is here.  The management doesn't get that much dine-in business this early and figures to save money by keeping the heat down, knowing that the drive-thru customers won't know the difference.  Perhaps I should have chosen the drive-thru too but I'm here to try the new chocolate dipping sauce for their donut sticks, which have a very low mass relative to their exposed surface area and will lose their heat quickly.  I want to experience them at their absolute freshness, along with a medium serving of their latest McCafé offering, the Cinnamon Cookie Latte.  So I brace myself for the inhospitable chill and head inside.

Miscues and Miscommunications

McDonald's media communications and in-store video messaging are breathless with excitement about these two new seasonal items, but the person taking the order doesn't seem to be aware of them.  When I ask for the Cinnamon Cookie Latte, I get a blank stare.  I repeat the order request and she fumbles around with the touch screen terminal, struggling to find this cinnamon cookie thing, ultimately having to call over a supervisor to find it.  When the order finally comes, it's just the latte and the donut sticks, without any dipping sauce.  "What about the chocolate dipping sauce?" I cry out.  Oh yea, that.  It's in one of those little tubs with the peel-off foil, along with all the other McNugget sauces in their neighboring bins, a forlorn afterthought.   I wasn't expecting a heated ceramic ramekin or anything, but this isn't a good sign.

You can almost taste and smell the holiday cheer emanating from this promotional photo for the McCafé Cinnamon Cookie Latte and Chocolate Dipping Sauce.  Can the real thing live up to this?

The Consequences of Cold and Carelessness

There's the old joke about the two blue-haired ladies from Brooklyn at lunch.  One kvetches "oh, the food here is awful" and the other replies "yes, and the portions are so small!" Easy enough to laugh at this point of view but I'm feeling it right now as I stare at the freshly prepared latte that doesn't even come up to the fill line for, I presume, hot drip coffee. It seems quite the stingy portion.  But beyond that, it tastes so... uncookie-like?  Where's the warm sweetness that's supposed to call to mind cookies fresh from the oven? I can taste the somewhat acrid cinnamon floating on top of the limp foam, but otherwise there isn't much flavor at all in this tepid liquid whose temperature has already been dampened by the ambient chill.

My heart sank when I removed the lid off my McCafé cup and saw this drab, dingy mix of barely-warm milk and flavors.  The espresso shot and the cinnamon-sugar flavor seemed MIA.

Low Temps Claim Their Final Victim

Gathering myself from the first disappointment, I hoped my morning breakfast treat might rally on the strength of the warm donut sticks dipped in luscious chocolate sauce.  But it won't surprise you to hear that the actual chocolate sauce was not the warm, molten, freely flowing liquid from the promotional picture.  Rather it resembled slightly old and desiccated barbeque sauce...or lacquer...or maybe an accumulation of tobacco tar.  In the end, I settle upon Snack-Pak pudding, that shelf stable lunchbox treat of days past.  The cool temperatures have made the sauce stodgy and viscous.  How much so?  To submerge the end of the warm donut sticks into it, I have to jam the stick so hard that the fried dough almost crumples.  And to extract it, I have to hold the tub of brown stuff with my free other free hand so that it doesn't lift up off the tray when I bring the donut stick to my mouth.  Which is a shame, because if this sauce were kept slightly heated it would be pretty darn good.  The chocolate flavor is genuine and fairly intense.

There sits the chocolate sauce, inert, unwelcoming, and looking for all the world like a collected sample from the La Brea Tar Pit.

Oh, That's Where the Cinnamon Cookie Taste Went

As I'm wrapping up my visit, I get down to the last fourth of the Cinnamon Cookie Latte and the flavor starts to change. What once had been kind of bitter and bland suddenly becomes sickly sweet and syrupy like the smell of too many scented candles in one room.  And now I realize why I hadn't gotten much cinnamon cookie flavor all this time.  That flavor is all contained in the mixing syrup and the latte had been insufficiently stirred, with all the flavor lying concentrated at the bottom.  Who knows what this new drink tastes like at its best.  I'm sure I'll exert myself to find out at some point, but I'm in no hurry now.   The lesson here is that it doesn't matter how well conceived the ingredients shipped in from corporate are if the management and staff are too indifferent to treat them with proper care and serve them under the proper conditions.  I used to expect much better from McDonald's in terms of consistency of execution, but those days are becoming distant memories, like Golden Arches receding below the horizon.