CHICAGO — While he was a sensation on social media, the new Hamburglar didn’t succeed at his main job: promoting McDonald’s sirloin burgers.
The menu item added earlier this year failed to meet sales goals, even with a big marketing push from the reimagined Hamburglar mascot in May. The limited-time item expired this summer, and restaurants are phasing them out.
“Our sirloin burger didn’t meet our expectations,” said Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s Corp. “However, this sandwich represents action steps the U.S. has taken to enhance food-quality perceptions. Seventy-six percent of customers who tried the sirloin burger said their opinion of McDonald’s beef improved.”
When McDonald’s brought back the Hamburglar earlier this year, the character morphed from a cartoonish bandit into a hipster dad with stubble. He caused a sensation on Twitter and Facebook, with social-media users debating his attractiveness and sartorial choices (in addition to a Zorro-style mask, he wears a burger tie, trench coat and black-and-white striped prison garb).
