Insider Retail: McDonald's Travis Scott collaboration is a success, but its spicy chicken nuggets disappoint
Hello and happy Friday!
Welcome back to another week of Insider Retail, Business Insider's weekly round-up of everything that's happening in restaurants and retail. If you haven't already subscribed, click here to get me, Shoshy Ciment, and my colleague, Kate Taylor, in your inbox every Friday.
Now onto the news of the week:
The McDonald's Travis Scott meal is a success
McDonald's partnership with rapper Travis Scott is a massive win for the chain. Even though the collaboration doesn't include any new menu items, McDonald's said it was facing item shortages due to the meal's popularity.
McDonald's also wants employees to learn Travis Scott catchphrases that customers will use to order the meal, such as "the Fornite guy burger" and "You know why I am here" (while playing Scott' music).
With sales doing so well, McDonald's said that we can expect more celebrity partnerships from the chain in the future.
Amazon's explosive growth, charted
Amazon is hiring 133,000 new full-time and part-time employees in the US and Canada, in part driven by a pandemic-era boost in sales.
While this latest hiring spree is big, the largest confirmed workforce increase for the company occured between between 2016 and 2017. Áine and Hayley tracked Amazon's workforce growth via two charts, which highlight the chain's explosive growth.
Check out their analysis here.
Inside the lucrative world of drop shipping
This week, Catherine dug into the lucrative world of drop shipping, a type of fulfillment method where the seller acts as an intermediary between the customer and the supplier and does not hold any inventory. She spoke to Kamil Sattar, a drop shipper that has already made $1.7 million in sales on Shopify this year.
He shared his top four tips for getting into the lucrative business in 2020.
Taste test: McDonald's spicy chicken McNuggets versus Wendy's classic spicy chicken nuggets
McDonald's launched its spicy chicken McNuggets on Wednesday. Naturally, Irene had to see if the new menu item was a worthy challenger to spicy nuggets at Wendy's, which were brought back last year.
Her verdict? Wendy's is still the "reigning champion of spicy nuggets," beating out McDonald's when it comes to spice, flavor, and price.
Read the full spicy taste test here.
Everything else you need to know:
- Peloton might have a left peddle problem.
- Target is experiencing "one of the fastest rebuilds of a Target store ever" in the Minneapolis store that was destroyed in mid-November during racial protests.
- Kraft Heinz has a new strategy for managing its food brands.
- Chuck E. Cheese is looking to destroy about 7 billion paper prize tickets worth about $9 million in prizes.
- This TikTok spurred hoodie sales for a DTC clothing brand.
- The ex-girlfriend of ousted McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook talks about becoming a tabloid sensation