Praise the burger gods, McDonald’s value menu is coming back

All of our good karma has paid off, because McDonald’s is bringing back a revamped version of its classic value menu.

It’s been a banner week for McDonald’s. The fast food chain most closely associated with obesity in America is splitting the difference between owning what they represent and giving us what we want.

Hearing news that McD’s is now offering home delivery is the epitome of the stereotype they live everyday. But fast for is a value market, and home delivery is genius — and so is cheap prices. If you want to go for the value market, having a value menu is usually helpful.

In 2016, McDonald’s dropped their much beloved value menu to try and move in a more classy (see: artisan) direction. But after a year of trying to rebrand itself as a place that will kill you much more softly than every before, McDonald’s is bringing the value menu back.

It seems that this move is largely motivated not by a love of the customer but the realization that we’re never paying more than $3 for a McDonald’s anything. Cowen and Company analyst Andrew Charles says that the idea here is for McDonald’s to nail the balance between cheap prices and high quality options.

“We continue to believe McDonald’s should avoid premium efforts (i.e., sandwiches priced above $5) given the recent history of limited success.”

Let’s not pretend like we’re too terribly offended by this. Thee value menu was a key part of saving money, and now is as good a time as any to see it return. It’s unclear what the new value menu will look like, but it sounds like a general re-branding of the menu as a whole.

There’s a pretty decent chance that some of the new “artisan” options for McDonald’s make their way to the value menu. That’s peak value/quality synergy and it’s a combination that should continue to help McDonald’s class itself up after years of being the face of everything terrible about the fast food industry.