M is for McDonald's Pizza

McDonald's is known for fast service and predictability. That's why people eat there even if they're not big fans of the food. You always know what you're going to get. However from time to time they waver from this predictability and try new menu items. Sometimes those work or sometimes they don't. For example, breakfast burritos are going strong but the Hula Burger isn't.

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One of the new items they tried was pizza in the late 1980s. However, it was gone by the early 1990s. It didn't seem to fit the fast food model since it took 10 minutes to prepare and it literally didn't fit through some of the drive through windows. The plan was that it would be a dinner item and families would come into the restaurant to eat, but they didn't. Thus it was discontinued.

That is all except two places--one in Ohio and one in West Virginia. Both stores were owned by the same owner and year after year he kept making pizzas. And people kept eating them. One of those McDonald's was in my home town. I had already moved away by the time they started serving pizza, but ate it many times while visiting my parents. In fact that was one of the things we'd do, get a pizza from McDonald's when we visited. There were other places to buy pizza in town, but Micky D's was my parents' favorite. They had their little ritual. They'd order a pizza with everything and my mother would pick off the meat and give it to my father and he would pick off the veggies and give them to her. The McDonald's pizza was not bad and certainly a bargain at $6 for a large.

These two locations served these pizzas for years with no fuss until they got word of it in Canada where the McPizza was first tested. Three young men made a trip to WV to try the pizza and the idea went viral. Traveling to have McDonald's pizza became the thing to do. And when the corporate office got wind of the whole thing, and they said the pizza had to be discontinued. That was how they could control the predictability that was one of their trademarks.

Last summer the last pizzas were served and my mother got one of them. Her friend got her one and brought it to her in the nursing home for lunch. Sadly, this time my father wasn't around to exchange toppings with her, but she enjoyed it all the same.

Time marches on and things change. That's the way it was for the Micky D's pizza and as trivial as it seems, the pizza is missed.

Note: There is a McDonald's in Orlando that started serving pizza in 2016. The store is 18,000 square feet and is one of the largest McDonald's in the world. There are many other items on the menu besides pizza that are not on a regular McDonald's menu.