A Former McDonald's Crew Trainer Revealed All Their Secrets And Menu Hacks

A former crew trainer and assistant manager at McDonald's Tony Bridges answered a couple questions on Quora about all the his secrets about menu hacking and the secret menu..

"The thing about "secret" menus at restaurants is that they are completely unofficial, which means that the folks there are not trained on how to make them. Whether or not you can get it depends entirely on who you get working the store that day. That includes the person who rings you up, who has to figure out how to charge you for it, the manager, who generally gets asked whether or not it's allowed, and the line person who has to figure out how to assemble it." 

A grilled cheese sandwich - "There are two different ways of making this, either on the grill or by running the whole sandwich through the bun toaster. I've done both. Busy restaurants won't do this for you because it ties up the equipment for just one sandwich, and the cheese has pretty high odds of messing something up."

A Big 'n Tasty - "It used to be an official menu item, but it hasn't been for years. It's not so much a secret menu item as some people don't pay enough attention to the menu to realize it hasn't been on offer for five years (ten, in some locations) but all the ingredients are still in the store and the vets remember how to make it." 

Grilled Onions - "Sometimes you can get them to grill the quarter onions for you before they put them on the burger. I wouldn't try this at a busy place, and it helps to know people in the grill, but it's so much better." 

You can pretty much assemble ANYTHING - "You can get anything in the restaurant on anything else in the restaurant. You can add an extra beef patty, you can get just a plain bun, you can get a Quarter Pounder on a regular bun or a chicken sandwich on a quarter bun or whatever the heck you want. But it will cost you extra, and it's going to take a minute while the person at the register figures out how to ring it up. It may even cost different prices depending on how you say it and how the person rings it up." 

For the freshest meat patties - "If it's slow, order your beef patties with no salt. I think they're better that way, but more importantly, they have to make them fresh, so you're not getting patties that have probably been sitting in the warming tray for however long. You can just order fresh instead of no salt, but I recommend you try them unseasoned. I really think they're better. Also, it takes less than a minute to make fresh regular patties" 

Don't go an order chicken and chips tho - "If you ask for fresh chicken, you're going to get some people upset with you because it takes six minutes to make. If you ask for fries without salt and then immediately salt them, you're going to get people upset with you because trying to get fresh hot fries into a container without getting them covered in the salt that coats the fry station is a good way to burn yourself really bad."  

And DEFINITELY not in the drive-thru - "Don't order anything weird in the drive-thru. Drive-thrus are for convenience orders and you shouldn't go through there if you don't know what you want, if you are ordering something that will take a long time, or if you have a very large order." 

Of course don't forget your manners:

"Smile, and remember basic courtesies. You can get away with a lot of cr*p at McDonald's if you treat the people there like people." 

The Other employees and 'secret menu' users gave us their tips too -

"You can order Mac Sauce (the sauce from the Big Mac) on any burger you like." - Jonathan Deesing

"Try the 'Land, Air, and Sea'. It's a quarter-pounder with a fillet of fish and a crispy chicken, all in one sandwich." - Rich Pantini

We have no idea where this former employee worked so here's hoping all these unwritten rules apply to NZ maccas too.

h/t: flava.co.nz