While the chain relies on menu stability and experiments with things that deviate from that much less frequently than some of its competitors, McDonald's (DCM) has released several items that it later discontinued over the years.
As part of its efforts to expand its breakfast offerings, the fast-food chain first introduced a breakfast bagel with egg and a protein such as sausage, steak or cheese in 1999. The bagels would be reworked in some form (at one point , the chain sold plain bagels with cream cheese like a New York deli) and was removed from the menu several times over the next two Decembers.
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McDonald's launched a new type of egg and meat bagel in 2018 but when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, it discontinued it due to both low demand and minimizing the staff needed in stores.
The street
This is where you can find these McDonald's bagels.
Since then, McDonald's has started bringing back bagels in different locations around the country. In November 2022, the Steak, Egg, and Cheese Bagel, Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Bagel, and Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Bagel were returned to some locations in Chicago and New York.
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Later, eagle-eyed fans began seeing the item in some restaurants in Southern California, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
The latest market to receive breakfast bagels includes locations in South and Central Texas, such as Austin, San Antonio, College Station, Bryan and Corpus Christie.
As first reported by industry website Chewboom, McDonald's fans have seen them reappearing at their local restaurants and have posted the news online. The McDonald's Breakfast Bagel has a cult following and, during the time it was discontinued, several requests crying out for his return began to appear.
The fans have spoken out: 'We want them back!'
“At the beginning of the pandemic, McDonalds took away all the bagel breakfast sandwiches!” reads a 2021 petition launched by a fan named Brandon. “It's been forever and we're sitting here waiting for him to come back but they always tell us they don't think he's coming back!! Well, we want them back!!
This particular petition received nearly 2,000 signatures, and while McDonald's rarely comments directly on such fan requests, it has been reading the general room and slowly reintroducing breakfast bagels in more and more locations.
Not all bagel sandwiches are available in all places during the morning hours, but they have now recovered enough that one is not unlikely to find them at one's home restaurant; A quick search shows that the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Bagel Breakfast Sandwich is available in places like New York, Chicago, and many parts of Florida. Once the chain brings them back, bagels generally remain a permanent part of its breakfast offering rather than a temporary or seasonal promotion.
“The loss of McDonald's bagels never made sense because, other than the meat version of the breakfast sandwich, the only item added was the bagel itself,” Daniel Kline wrote for TheStreet earlier this year. “It's just not a lot of extra work for the chain to supply another line of bread, and toasting a bagel is no different than toasting an English muffin.”
