Inside the Kitchen: What Does a McDonald’s Kitchen Look Like?

Posted by jennifer in Oct, 2020

I’m sure that this is a question thousands, if not millions, of people, are curious about. McDonald’s is one of the biggest fast-food chains serving approximately 69 million customers worldwide every day. McDonald’s has 34,000 restaurants (yes, it is classed as a restaurant) in 118 different countries and somehow the famous McDonald’s French fries always come out exactly the same. If you go traveling and are unsure of where to eat the one restaurant you can always count on being consistent no matter what country you’re in is McDonald’s. As well as always being exactly the same another question about the mysterious McDonald’s kitchens is how do they always make your food so quickly, even at the busiest of times the wait is never long. We were given the opportunity to see the inside of a McDonald’s kitchen so we jumped at the chance to finally get these questions answered, how could we say no?

Fry Station

The first thing that caught our eye during our tour of a Mcdonald’s kitchen was the fry station. It was the longest line of deep fat fryers we had ever seen and it started to make sense to us how they deliver food so quickly. These deep fat fryers were used for French fries, chicken items, and fish. Not only did they have a large capacity for cooking these foods, but we knew from reading reviews of the very best deep fat fryers that they have high-quality equipment helping them to deliver tasty food as quickly as they do. How these station works were simple, the French fries start frozen, they’re added to a deep fat fryer and within minutes are cooked to perfection, then salt is added to bring out the best flavor, then they’re boxed up and sent out to the customer. The process is very similar to the chicken and the fish.

Beef Burger Station

This was probably the most used station in the kitchen as there was a constant flow of Big Mac orders. The beef patties are prepared in their own section of the kitchen. The patties come frozen but are prepared with salt and pepper to give that iconic taste of a McDonald’s burger. It takes very little time to cook them, the slabs they’re cooked between are set to a very high temperature allowing the burgers to be cooked in only 2 minutes! Then they’re sent to the assembly line for additional ingredients then delivered to the customer.

Assembly Line

This is where all the different aspects of your meal start to come together. The staff is well trained and the speed at which they worked at the assembly line without making mistakes was impressive to watch. They assemble the burgers and the wraps here before boxing them up, the most fun part of this section of the kitchen was definitely the sauce guns they use to add sauce to the burgers.

Drinks

The drinks section was by far the simplest, all it takes is the press of a button. Mcflurries are also made in this section and again really simple just an ice cream machine with the different toppings stored above it.

Hygiene

One thing we noticed was inside the kitchen the hygiene standards were extremely high, when an employee enters the kitchen they are required to wash their hands every 30 minutes. Any equipment that they use is thoroughly cleaned many times throughout the day and all employees have a McDonald’s cap as part of their uniform to prevent any hair from ever reaching your food.