There’s a new McDonald’s serving up wood-fired pizza! McYes, please.
When you think of McDonald’s, what comes to mind? Is it pizza baked fresh in wood-fire ovens? If not, you might want to brace yourself to see Mickey-D’s in a whole new way, because soon visitors to Orlando’s International Drive will be able to enjoy Ronald McDonald’s own finest pizzas.
Local franchise-owner Oerther Foods Inc started building the new McDonald’s location last month, and is calling the project the World’s Largest Entertainment McDonald’s & PlayPlace. It’s a mouthful, but it sounds like it might be deserved. The plans are intense — in addition to those wood-fire ovens we mentioned earlier, there will be arcade games and custom burger ordering kiosks.
But let’s circle back to these pizzas for a minute, because this isn’t the first time McDonald’s has rolled out some Italian-adjacent specialties. Back in the 1980s, McSpaghetti and McPizza popped up menus around the country for the first time. The company played around with calzones and actual pizzas through the later half of the decade, but they started getting cut in the early 1990s. They just weren’t that popular, and the cost was insane. $9 for a specialty pizza in the late 1980s? The people just weren’t loving it.
Of course, McDonald’s is a franchise, so some stores kept the pizza around. Actually, not some. Two still have McPizza hanging around, both of them owned by Greg Mills, according to Eater. I guess Ohio and West Virginia are just super into the McPizza? And they’re not the only ones. There’s a Change.org petition out there calling for McDonald’s to bring back the McPizza nationwide. So there’s that.
Either way, the new wood-fire pizzas will only be featured in Orlando, at least for now. The new location is opening in February, so we still have some time before we get to see those wood-fire ovens in action. Until then, we’ll be daydreaming about fine McDining.
(Image via Change.org)
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