While the chain relies on menu stability and experiments with things that deviate from that far less frequently than some of its competitors, McDonald’s (MCD) has launched several items that it later discontinued over the years.
As part of its efforts to expand its breakfast offering, the fast-food chain first introduced a breakfast bagel with egg and a protein such as sausage, steak or cheese in 1999. Bagels in some form would be reworked (at one point, the chain sold plain bagels with cream cheese like at a New York deli) and taken off the menu multiple times over the next two dec
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McDonald’s launched a new type of bagel with egg and meat in 2018 but, as the covid-19 pandemic gripped the world in 2020, discontinued it due to both low demand and to minimize staff needed in the stores.
TheStreet
This is where you’ll be able to find these McDonald’s bagels
Since then, McDonald’s has started slowly bringing back bagels at different locations across the country. In November 2022, the Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel, the Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel and the Sausage, Egg & Cheese Bagel were returned to some Chicago and New York locations.
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Eagle-eyed fans later started seeing the item in some Southern California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee restaurants.
The latest market to get the breakfast bagels includes South and Central Texas locations such as Austin, San Antonio, College Station, Bryan and Corpus Christie.
As first reported by industry website Chewboom, McDonald’s fans have been seeing them reappear at their local restaurants and posting the news online. The McDonald’s Breakfast Bagel has a cult following and, during the time it was discontinued, several petitions clamoring for its return started popping up.
The fans have spoken: ‘We want them back!’
“At the beginning of the pandemic McDonalds took away all the bagel breakfast sandwiches!” a 2021 petition launched by a fan named Brandon reads. “It’s been forever and we are sitting here waiting for it to come back but yet are always told they don’t think it is 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 re-introducing breakfast bagels to more and more places.
Not every bagel sandwich is available at all locations during the morning hours but it has now been brought back enough that it is not unlikely one will find it at one’s home restaurant — a quick search shows that the Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel Breakfast Sandwich is available in places like New York, Chicago and many parts of Florida. Once the chain brings it back, the bagels generally remain as a permanent part of its breakfast offering rather than a seasonal or temporary promotion.
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“The loss of McDonald's bagels never made sense because aside from the steak version of the breakfast sandwich, the only added item was the bagel itself,” Daniel Kline wrote for TheStreet earlier this year. “It's simply not much extra work for the chain to stock another line of bread and toasting a bagel is no different than toasting an English muffin.”
