Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
- McDonald's Signature Crafted burgers are the chain's attempt at premium, "better burgers."
- The premium lineup is helping the chain's sales numbers, according to an April earnings call.
- When compared against two other major "better burger" chains, Shake Shack and Five Guys, we found them to hold their own in terms of quality.
McDonald's attempt to latch on to the meteoric rise of the better burger trend is yielding decent results.
In the company's last earnings call in April, McDonald's CFO Kevin Ozan said that sales are being buoyed, in part, by sales of the chain's Signature Crafted line of premium burgers, which run about $1-2 more than the rest of McDonald's burger menu.
After the experiment with a customizable burger program a few years ago proved unsuccessful, McDonald's tweaked it and retained several premium burger options - a garlic white cheddar burger, a pico guacamole burger, and a sweet BBQ bacon burger.
These burgers also have the distinction of using fresh beef patties, a very recent change to McDonald's longstanding and often-maligned tradition of using frozen patties.
This could reasonably put them in the same league as other fresh-grilled, premium, national burger chains - namely, Shake Shack and Five Guys. So we decided to compare McDonald's better-burger lineup to its competition to see if it has staying power in the industry - and we were surprised by what we found: