McDonald’s launched its new burger earlier this summer at all of its 205 Portugal restaurants, which includes two beef patties “perfectly layered with melting cheese, crispy toppings, and a tangy McDonald’s sauce,” Chris Kempczinski, chairman and CEO of McDonald’s, said during the fast-food giant’s earnings call Monday.
The Big Arch is a whopping 1,065 calories, according to the menu listing. Adult women typically require just 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day, according to the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, while adult men require about 2,200 to 3,000 calories. That means the burger could take up more than two-thirds of one’s daily caloric intake—and that’s before adding fries and a drink to wash it down.
Courtesy McDonald’s
“Our team of chefs from around the world have created a more satiating burger to meet customer demand and to deliver on our ongoing commitment to menu innovation,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune. “We’ll be testing this burger in a few markets this year, ensuring that it has universal appeal.”
McDonald’s is piloting the new menu item across three international markets this year but won’t scale more broadly internationally until they “learn through the end of the year to gather learnings,” Kempczinski said. The Big Arch is being tested in Portugal, Canada, and Germany starting this summer. Kempczinski had hinted about a bigger burger hitting McDonald’s stores back in a December 2023 interview with CNN.
“In the US, in a number of markets, around the world, having a larger burger is an opportunity,” Kempczinski told CNN. “We’re working on that. That is something that you should expect in the future.” McDonald’s has yet to say when or whether they’d launch the burger in the U.S.
Is bigger really better?
The goal in launching the Big Arch is to “address unmet customer needs with a more satiating burger that will provide great value for money,” Kempczinski said during the earnings call. The Big Arch undoubtedly does that since it contains 36% more calories than the Double Big Mac and has more calories than anything else on the McDonald’s menu.
In terms of providing “great value for money,” that’s somewhat hard to tell, considering McDonald’s franchises select their own prices, which can vary by restaurant and market. One McDonald’s restaurant in Lisbon has the Big Arch listed for $9.70 with fries and a drink in an Uber Eats listing, but often food-delivery apps upcharge menu items at participating restaurants.
Looking beyond the calories, the Big Arch also contains 67 grams of fat, which is 96% of the recommended daily fat intake for adults, Melissa Boufounos, sports nutritionist and owner of MB Performance Nutrition in Canada, told Fortune.
“As a sports nutritionist, I’m big on people eating an optimal amount of protein. With two beef patties, the Big Arch provides a whopping 57 grams of protein,” Boufounos said. “But that doesn’t mean I recommend rushing out to order one. There’s truly no need for a menu item to serve up 1,065 calories.”
Even more so than the calories, the fat content of the menu item is “worrisome” to Boufounos.
“Eating too much highly processed and fatty animal-based protein can contribute to high cholesterol, heart disease, and other chronic health conditions,” she said. “Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., with someone suffering from a heart attack every 40 seconds. To me, this burger is a step in the wrong direction.”
However, Kempczinski insists it’s a “quintessential McDonald’s burger with a twist on our iconic familiar flavors.”
The announcement of the Big Arch also comes at the heels of McDonald’s $5 value meal it announced in late June, but that promotion lasted only a month. The company offered four menu items: a McChicken or McDouble burger, four chicken nuggets, fries, and a drink for just $5—a deal that delivered on another promise made by Kempczinski, who said the company would increase the number of its cost-effective menu options after poor earnings results in the fourth quarter of 2023.
McDonald’s missed its second-quarter 2024 results, too. For the quarter, which ended on June 30, McDonald’s reported $6.49 billion in revenue, a 2% increase from last year, but less than Wall Street estimates across revenue, earnings, and same-store sales.
“Consumers are more discriminating with their spend,” Kempczinski said during the earnings call. In addition to the launch of the Big Arch, McDonald’s is also focused on “accelerating strategic growth drivers like chicken and loyalty,” he added.
