Order Up: The Insights System Behind McDonald's Menu Innovation Pipeline

Session Details: What feels adventurous on a restaurant menu today becomes a consumer expectation at QSR tomorrow — and the window between the two is shrinking. McDonald's recognized that keeping pace meant evolving not just their menu, but how they build their innovation pipeline. How could they build a system to build a pipeline of menu home runs - at scale and over time?

In this session, we'll pull back the curtain on how the McDonald's team lay the foundations for future menu innovation, and gave themselves permission to stretch into new places. Dig's tech-enabled approach turned multiple research modalities into one strategic map for future menu decisions: qual research surfaced what customers deeply crave, foresight mapped the macro flavor spaces of today and tomorrow, and quant research pressure-tested which of those spaces McDonald's can credibly own, and which represent genuinely new territory to expand into.
Attendees will hear directly from McDonalds' Amanda Addison, Consumer Insights Director, and Libby Gormley, Consumer Insights Manager, about the impact of the research on the business now, where the research surprised them, and what comes next.
Structured as a fireside chat with methodology deep-dives woven throughout, this session is built for researchers who want the how as much as the what.
 
Key Takeaways
1. Qualitative research and foresight work aren't just context — they're infrastructure. Ethnographic research with flavor-adventurous consumers didn't just generate insight; it built the need-space architecture that every subsequent phase was built on. Attendees will learn how to design qualitative and foresight-fuelled research that does real structural work downstream.
2. The real output isn't a ranking — it's a strategic map. The quant wasn't designed to produce a "best flavors" list. It was designed to answer two distinct questions: which flavors fit McDonald's today, and which ones could stretch the brand into new need spaces tomorrow. Attendees will see how methodology choices directly shape strategic utility.
3. Speed and rigor don't have to trade off — but it takes intentional system design. The program succeeded because the phases were architected to feed each other, not run in parallel silos. This is what "tech-enabled, human-led" actually looks like in practice — and why the insights held up with leadership, not just the research team.