The 120 McDonald’s stores in Utah will be among the first in the country to sell quarter pounders made with fresh beef — not frozen patties, according to company officials.
The new menu item will be available beginning Tuesday, March 6.
Utah is one of eight markets that will introduce the fresh beef burger in advance of the national 14,000-store roll-out in May. Other early markets are Atlanta; Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C.; Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Miami; and Orlando, Fla., officials said.
The fresh meat patties will be cooked to order when customers get a quarter pounder, quarter pounder with cheese, a double quarter pounder or a signature crafted recipe burger, McDonald’s officials said in a news release. The patties are made with 100 percent beef, “with no fillers, additives or preservatives.”
The move to fresh beef is the latest customer-led intitiative for McDonald’s. The company recently committed to only sourcing cage-free eggs by 2025 in the U.S. and serving chicken not treated with antibiotics important to humans. (Farmers will still use ionophore, a class of antibiotics that is not prescribed to people, to keep chickens healthy.)
Several McDonald’s competitors have already taken the fresh-not-frozen patty route, including Wendy’s, In-N-Out Burger and Five Guys.