People are Reselling This McDonald's Menu Item for Hundreds Online. Now It's Coming Back to Menus -- And the Internet is Bracing Itself for the Craze The infamous condiment last appeared in restaurants back in 2018.
By Emily Rella
McDonald's fans are known to form cult-like followings around limited edition menu items arguably moreso than customers of any other fast-food chain (don't come for us, Taco Bell fanatics.)
With the annual craze that surrounds the St. Patrick's Day-adjacent release of the Shamrock Shake, to the commotion caused by the surprise announcements year in and year out of the McRib being added back to menus, it's safe to say that the fast-food titan knows what it's doing when it comes to creating major hype around certain items.
Perhaps one of the wildest crazes to hit McD's menus was the the Schezuan Sauce, a teriyaki-esque dipping sauce that was originally put on menus in promotion with the movie Mulan back in 1998.
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The sauce was then made popular by cartoon show Rick and Morty in a 2017 episode, which drove demand for the mystery sauce through the roof and created a social media craze that led the chain to re-release limited batches of the sauce in October 2017.
The sauce came back again in 2018 for one day only and created a similar frenzy, with containers of the sauce still being sold on eBay to this day, with one container being listed for a casual $269.99.
Customers were stockpiling, hoarding and even driving extreme distances to get their hands on the condiment — and now it looks like we might have another craze on the rise.
McDonald's surprise announced that it would be bringing back its Szechuan Sauce on March 31 while supplies last.
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The chain didn't specify how long the sauce would be available for other than saying it would be on menus for "just a few days".
This will be the fourth time the sauce has returned to menus in 24 years, described as "savory and slightly sweet" dipping option with "hints of soy, garlic, ginger and mild vinegar notes."
Schezuan Sauce will only be available through the McDonald's app (either selected as a choice condiment with an order of McNuggets or standalone with up to five containers of sauce allowed per order), presumably in an effort to increase digital orders and app usage while also avoiding the chaos that came with the 2017 and 2018 releases.
McDonald's was up over 5% year over year as of late Tuesday morning.
