Solo Acts: McRib Locator's Alan Klein

In this next episode of our Vergecast Solo Acts mini series, Ashley Esqueda talks with Alan Klein, the creator of the McRib Locator, a website that helps people track and submit where McDonald's BBQ pork sandwich is available in stores. Alan shares what drove him to make this free tool for people back in 2009, what he does with the data he's collected, what's next for the site after the McRib's "farewell tour" this past fall, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Alex Cranz?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of snacks with a little MSG in them. Just, just a little. I'm your friend Alex Cranz, and today we have a new episode of the Solo Axe mini-series, which features interviews from people who are working independently to create great things on the internet. Every Monday on The Vergecast, our friend Ashley Esqueda is curating and hosting these interviews and sharing with us everything she's learned. Hello, Ashley.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Hi, how are you?

• 0:54Alex Cranz?

  I'm doing good. I'm a little hungry. It's getting around lunchtime here.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Well, I have the perfect interview for you. It's gonna make you extra hungry.

• 1:01Alex Cranz?

  Yes, because last week you talked to Rulika Pop from Hive Social. Who do you have for me this week?

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I am very excited today to have the creator of the McRib locator, Alan Klein.

• 1:12Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  This is a website where users can track how they can find a McDonald's McRib sandwich.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  The McRib is back on the new taste menu at McDonald's, but only for a while. So hurry in for that one-of-a-kind, super saucy piled-on-a-home-style roll taste.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Alan might actually be the biggest McRib fan on the planet. And we are gonna talk about why he spent so much of his free time making this website, what he does with all of the McRib location data, which is very interesting, and the future of his work since the McRib went on a farewell tour last year.

• 1:47Alex Cranz?

  All right, well, I know I'm gonna be absolutely starved by the end of this, so let's go ahead and get to it.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Hi, Alan.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me today.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I cannot wait to talk to you about McRib Locator. So I have given a very broad description of the site. But Alan, do you mind explaining to our listeners in more detail about McRib Locator and how it works?

• 2:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. So the McRib Locator webpage, it's really a crowdsourced driven page where people from across the world, it's not just the United States that have the McRib. They can come and contribute to the page saying, I found a McRib at a given location. And then as an addition to that, fans can come in and say, yes, I agree there was one there, or I can dispute that finding because sometimes we get some little bit over excited fans that may be a little bit too soon. So we build up this base of places on a map so people can see where can I find the nearest McRib? Because we never know when they're going to be around or how far we have to go to find them.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  That's so intriguing that it's all user generated data. This reminds me a lot of Gawker Stalker or that old website for finding iPhones when it,

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  before we could really kind of order them online. Do you remember when you ate your first McRib?

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do. It's a memory from back way in my youth. I grew up on a family farm in South Dakota and we raised hogs. And we took them to town one day to market. And I remember with my dad, right after taking them to the marketplace, we went over to the local McDonald's in town and they happened to have the McRib on the menu. And I remember eating the McRib, not necessarily so much for the McRib itself, but having a kind of surreal moment as a child realizing like, we just took hogs to market and now here we are eating the byproduct of all of our efforts. And it's not just feeding ourselves, it's like feeding essentially the entire world.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  That's so fascinating that you, that was your first McRib experience. That is very surreal.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  It really is because you do all that work, you do all the work on a farm and you know it goes somewhere. But when you finally have that realization like, holy smokes, like I'm doing something much larger than just something here locally.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I would imagine it would also be so interesting to have had the experience of growing up on a farm raising hogs, you have a very different idea of what pork should taste like as opposed to the very processed version of what a McRib is that's made. I mean, they make it with a mold. So

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah. The McRib itself, right? It comes from, it's a pork shoulder is what they've said in the past and they, they process it down. And like you said, they put it through a mold processes to get it down to that rib-like shape that they distribute. Yeah, it's definitely the pork itself. When you have it as a different, you know, if you go get a pork chop or pork loin, it's a little bit different, right? Cause it's not that processed part, but it's still like the McRib itself still produces that, that feeling of, you know, the taste of the pork itself.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So what is it about the McRib that sparks joy for you? So much joy that you made a website about it.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  You know, it's always been from even when the origins of the McRib locator itself, it was like helping other people. It's not, it's no longer just the sandwich itself for me that keeps it going. It's, you know, I'm helping a larger community. It's fellow fans like myself. And that really is what keeps me driven to keep doing it because the sandwich itself I've always enjoyed, right? It's, it's a barbecue pork sandwich. You don't really have a comparable thing on the market in the fast food industry. You know, there's been a few other efforts of people trying to produce something very similar. But for a long time, if you wanted a pork product, you know, you're looking at the McRib, when's it coming? And there's that allure because for a long time, it was an offering that was store by store decisions. So you would go in a region

• 5:30Speaker 04

  like where I'm at now in Minnesota, we wouldn't have the McRib for a very long time. And suddenly, oh, look, it's back. And you get those memories. For me, it's some of those memories again of my youth, but for a lot of people, like it's just something you can't get somewhere else. That barbecue sandwich and a pork sandwich in a fast food venue.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  So when did you realize there needed to be a tool for finding the McRib? When did you decide to build the site? How long did it take?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so back a number of years ago, around that 2008, 2009 era, I was working in meteorology at the time. I have a meteorology degree, so that's where my, my story starts for professionally. And I was looking to make a product that was something to help find storm chasers. Because it really wasn't something at the time really to help coordinate your chasing. And it's more of where are my friends at, where are you at in the storm, those types of things. And I was working on it and working on it. And while I was at work one day, the McRib was back somewhere nearby. And it turned out there were a few other avid fans at my workplace. And we talked about how, boy, it's been a really long time since I've been able to get one. And it's always such a pain to find it. So this idea sparked of, well, instead of a storm locator,

• 6:35Speaker 04

  why couldn't it just be a McRib locator? And it kind of took off from there. Like, I started putting the pieces together after work, you know, kind of in my free time, something fun, learning and kept evolving it. And, you know, I don't remember exactly how long it took. There's a period of time where you have a product that's available as a webpage. And then there's the, how long does it take before people start using it? And I don't know if it was months or, you know, I don't really exactly remember the timeframe anymore. But I know it existed for some period of time before it really started to get its publicity out there.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would imagine the McRib came back kind of nationwide in 2012. Is that right? Like right around that timeframe. So I would imagine it was probably around then when people were really clamoring to find their McRibs. I can't believe the McRib locator was originally a tornado locator.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Pretty wild.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, there was sort of those struggles of, as a storm chaser, you wouldn't be able to get that accurate precision of location. And remembering back to 2008 and nine, our phones weren't always the best at producing that geolocation data in a friendly format back to webpages. So that's sort of what helped me pivot because a McDonald's location is static, right? It's not moving. So you're not so worried about, how do I keep real time? It's just, these are the places. And that, that also helped, you know, make my solution a little easier, because I could see like, okay, it's just a location now, not trying to find a floating location.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Right, it's fixed for the most part.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's fixed.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  And so, over the course of all of these years, you've, I'm sure, amassed some great deal of data on people who are reporting McRibs, is looking for McRibs.

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  What do you do with that data? Does McDonald's call you up? Do they say, "Hey, we're just doing some market research on the McRib and you're it? Can we take a peek at your books?"

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a great question. And honestly, the data itself, I keep it internal. You're right, that would be a valid exercise of that data, but that's never really been my application of it. It's more where are people reporting them at? You know, where are the fan base at? So I can try to help maybe guide some of my traffic that direction. Like, I can see, hey, it comes back in this part of the country first. Or, you know, a couple of years back, I produced a map of, here are the states that are most likely to have a McRib back if it's not a nationwide release. Because that's sort of the data I'm collecting, right? It's like, these are the reports. So, yes, certainly, there's more locations than what I have in my map because it's crowdsourced. But it's still the same premise of, here are the hotspots for fans reporting the McRib. So I kind of have an idea of, if I want to find one year to year, these are the most likely places.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  So mostly, the data has just been internally used just to kind of my own curiosity. I did have someone this year reach out to me, kind of trying to get information of, hey, in the Chicagoland area, when's the McRib available? And he was trying to correlate when the McRib was available to when the Chicago Bears win games or not, which was kind of a fun exercise for him to do. But again, it's very anonymous, right? I'm not, certainly not intending to send any personal data out.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Was there anything over the years that struck you as interesting about the data? Is there, is there a region that reports the most sightings? Is there, do you find that there's a specific part of the country or globally that just gets really jacked up about the McRib coming back? Like, what is the data that you have seen that you find the most interesting?

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is interesting, you know, more than we've done over the years where the releases have not been nationwide, trying to see how it trickles out to what regions get it first. And we definitely get a lot of traffic coming from the southeast, we get it from the south, and we do get it a little bit out to the west, too. But there are certainly states that are voids, whether it's just there's not as many fans there, maybe they're not as, you know, maybe they're not aware of the McRib locator, that's possible. But there are certainly some states we don't see it much. I see tons of traffic from New England states asking, will it be back? Because they're a part of the country that very often gets skipped. They don't get the McRib for one reason or another. I remember a couple of years ago, well, it's been a number of years ago now, New York City area, all the McDonald's store owners

• 10:35Speaker 04

  were trying to decide, should we bring the McRib back? And one of the locator's stores, they really wanted it back, but the majority said, no, we don't think we want to offer it this year. So that owner actually went on Twitter and was like, hey, everybody, I really tried for you, but it just didn't work out. So we see a huge draw to areas that don't get it, because they want to have it again. So the last couple of years, having it nationwide has been, you know, it's been really nice for all the fans that are out there.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  So, right now, currently, we should elaborate on this for people who are maybe less Mc-aware of the McRib status. So the McRib currently is retired. They had a farewell tour last fall.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  That's what they say, right? We've done this before. Like, this isn't new for McRib fans. That's sort of part of the alert for some, right? Like, will it be back? Or won't it be back? Thus far, we see, you know, every year, McDonald's reports how much revenues they've had in the quarters, and we've seen whenever the McRib has been back, those quarters seem to do better for them. So it's an interesting idea of, well, it's retired in the United States. Because keep in mind, in Germany, you can always get the McRib. It's there year-round. It's always available. And it does pop up in other parts of the world from time to time. We had Malta this year. I hadn't seen them for a long time. Or Australia even. There's people down there that get it, or Japan. It floats around where it comes. And oftentimes, those international options are maybe a little bit different spin on the McRib, but it's still the McRib. They still advertise it that way. Central America gets

• 12:00Speaker 04

  them every year now, too, where they have these little variations on them that are kind of fun. But, yeah, I mean, the fans come, they come in for most places, because they all want to participate and help each other, which is really what I like about the webpage.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but when I come back, I'll chat with Alex Krantz about McDonald's making their own version of the McRib locator, and how Alan felt about that.

• 12:34Speaker 00

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• 13:22Speaker 02

  Okay, we're back. And Alex Krantz is here. Hi, Alex.

• 13:26Alex Cranz?

  Hello. You guys have made me absolutely starving.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Good. I could not have imagined that there was a whole underbelly, a pork underbelly, if you will. There's just a whole underbelly world of finding a McRib. Like, the McRib has such a, has such a fanbase.

• 13:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I remember, like, used to, it was temporary. And so when he started this in 2009, it was like a limited offer, and kind of like the Shamrock Shake. And then in 2016, McDonald's had their own, like, app called the McRib Finder, which kind of felt like a clone.

• 13:59Speaker 05

  Well, friends, the cult classic is back at McDonald's. The McRib. If you want to make sure where you can find it, they actually have a McRib locator app. So you go into your app store and you can download this app, and it's a McRib Finder.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  But they absolutely must have known about Alan's page and then just, you know, just, just Facebooked it, just Facebooked it for themselves, as I like to call it. Yeah, it was a Very, obviously a very influential website for McRib lovers everywhere.

• 14:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  And clearly a very good idea. So they launched the McRib Finder, not locator.

• 14:32Alex Cranz?

  Uh huh.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Fun fact about that, it's not around anymore. So Alan's own McRib locator completely outlasted McDonald's official offering.

• 14:41Alex Cranz?

  Oh my God, I love that. So how does, how does Alan actually feel about McDonald's kind of aping his work?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Well, I asked him about that, so let's hear.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  I remember it coming out and going, wow, they're doing something just like I'm doing. But you know, the, the main difference always was is mine was crowdsourced. So the McDonald's webpage at the start of McRib season, they don't always show the availability that's truly in store. Because they're showing what's available for their consumers in their app, or that's what it is nowadays, is what's available in the app. And those early days, they don't show the McRib as available. We, I remember this year, someone said they went like two or three weeks before it actually became available on the register in store. They could still order it, but that was being rung up as a different product. And it certainly is certainly more interesting toward the end of the season too, is are they still there? And certainly the McDonald's app today, at least their mobile ordering app is certainly more accustomed to catching that toward the end.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  But that initial upfront is where my webpage continues to provide value for McRib fans because it's, it's not there on the menu, but we know it's there.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the, the reflection of live reporting is certainly a much more powerful tool for anybody actually seeking a McRib. So you're, you're going to keep going. You're going to keep the site up. You're going to keep it running. Do you consider yourself a Mc influencer? Are you like, is this a thing that you've, that has gone a little bit beyond McRib locator? Or do you feel like it's pretty contained to just like running this website? And specifically supporting people who would like to enjoy a McRib?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, there've been people reach out in the past asking for other products, perhaps that we would, we would try to pursue. And I did do another one where for the Shamrock Shake, right? The Shamrock Shake used to be one that wasn't always a perennial this time of year. So I had another idea where I did the Shake locator, but it wasn't as popular. Because again, it was a product that became more consistently available. And it still lives. It just isn't used all that much because fans know, oh, it's coming to be, you know, around St. Patrick's Day, we'll get a Shamrock Shake nowadays, but it certainly lives on. I mean, I certainly have no intention of disbanding the McRib locator. And I don't really see myself as an influencer per se. I mean, my efforts are always focused on the McRib. And I'm certainly going to promote because it, you know, obviously it helps myself get other fans onto the page that, you know,

• 16:52Speaker 04

  hey, the McRib is back. And I have had regional McDonald's locations contact me saying, hey, you know what, these particular stores are going to start serving it these days. You know, they want to help get the information in. But there's more of a mutual conversation. So than an influence type position.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  So I know that part of the website allows you to report anonymously. And if you do that, then you're you show up as the Hamburglar on the map, which is delightful. It's a great detail. But I can't make a Mick disinformation joke here. That word doesn't sound great. It's not funny. But how do you how do you deal with moderation? How do you deal with false reports? Have you ever had a situation in which you've been swarmed by people trying to sort of falsely claim a McRib is somewhere? I know this is like the smallest of problems for people like I've come to this McDonald's and the Hamburglar said there was a McRib here and there isn't one. But how do you how do you deal with that? Or have you ever had to deal with that?

• 17:49Speaker 04

  No, it's a very real problem. I do get plenty of reports every year from people for one reason or another. Maybe they thought they were going to say, I'd like to have one, or maybe they were just being funny with their friends to say, look, it's on a map. That seems to be most likely the case. That's where each of those reports before they're confirmed, there's an option to say, I think it's here, or I dispute that it's here. Because that helps me hone in on the ones that are most likely suspicious reporting. Obviously, like this time of year, I know most likely it's going to be not real if it's in the United States. But I can still go flush out, go look, do my diligence to find out, is it actually there? And I remember a couple of years ago, where one fan, you know, it's just myself and my wife helps do some of the social media stuff for me. It's just the two of us. Keep in mind,

• 18:33Speaker 04

  it's not there's not like a team of McRib locator staff here going through trying to track things down. So it's, you know, as I get to it outside of my normal day job, or whatever we have going on. And I remember One particular day, I got this email from someone there like, please take this location off the map. We're getting bombarded with calls. We don't have the McRib. And I apologized to them. Like, I'm so sorry that happened. I went in, removed it immediately because obviously, nobody wants that experience. But it's a real problem. So it's it's more, as best I can, I stay up with those reports to flush them out. And then, again, having the fans also help contribute to say, no, that's not true. That helps me focus in on those ones to start with.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is very interesting that you seem to have kind of grassroots cultivated a very transparent and willingly honest group of users who who seem very dedicated to making sure that accurate information is on your website. Like, I think that seems like a very baseline expectation. But I also believe that right now in 2023, it is actually maybe, maybe not a baseline expectation. And it is a pleasant surprise.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Again, it's not like you're saying, the majority of the users that come in, they're there for the honest reason of I'm interested in the McRib. And it's not terribly hard when people put in their fake reports. Oftentimes, there's things about those reports that make it very clear by the name or whatever it is that's in there. These aren't real reports. So by and far, the fans are people who legit, I want to contribute back to the McRib community.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  There's something really special about weird websites right now. We discussed this just a little bit when I did a sound check with you last week. There is an era of the internet from around the early aughts, where you could just find the strangest websites, the most niche websites. And they would be so delightful and bizarre and serve a very specific group of people. And it feels like the McRib locator is sort of an echo of that bygone era, because really, we don't have that as much anymore. Or it's all shifted really to social media. You have kind of your favorite weirdo niche accounts across social, wherever that may be. And I would

• 20:48Speaker 02

  love to hear your thoughts on that. Thoughts about the McRib locator still being a Traditional website, number one, and not having moved to an app or something that's a little bit more siloed off because you mentioned the McRib locator is a global tool and there are a lot of people who do not use smartphones in other markets. And so the ability to use the McRib locator seems very critical to me, no matter what type of phone you're using. And I would love to hear your thoughts on that. And just in general, that sort of having a website that is a little weird, a little different, that has echoes of that long gone era of weird websites you can find.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it definitely does do that. And a lot of, I think, like we said, those earlier years, you had something you would come in for, there was new content. So you kept coming back. Or there was a particular item, not really all that much different from things going viral as they do today. You had this thing like, this is really cool. And you would go and you would enjoy it for a while. And if there was nothing new, you kind of moved on. And the difference with the McRib locator was obviously, the data comes and goes, right? It's not, it's not just a one time, this is it type of thing. And I think that's what's helped keep the interest up in it. It certainly helps with a product that comes and goes off the market at seemingly no, no good reason. But yeah, it has always been very interesting to see these pages that come up, that go away, you know, they, they do a lot of things.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  And there's, I think, part of the reason they go away, maybe is there's a lot of upkeep for some webpages, right? Like, the more and more you build into it, the more and more upkeep there is. And that was sort of the same thing, because I used to have an app for mobile devices that I used, but it didn't really have the draw that the page itself did. Like you said, I think because people were more, I'm willing to go to a webpage, I'm a little hesitant to download an app. And maybe even in this case, like, this is a very strange, maybe I'll use it one time, kind of thing.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  It's an extra step that people are hesitant to do because your phone has, you know, precious real estate app wise. And it's like, there's that transaction there where you're like, oh, I feel obligated to use this if I'm going to install it on my phone.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  Right, and I certainly have had people still reach out like, hey, I really miss that app. And I'm like, well, you know, it just, there's not enough time to keep it, you know, keep it modern, to keep it useful. And it was an okay app. I mean, it certainly had things it needed improvements on, but it was still more, like, coming back to the webpage still gave you that full experience, because you could still contribute by looking at the map, you could still contribute by, you know, helping prove if a McRib report, if you thought it was true or not, if it's fake or not. And those kinds of things kept people coming back. And I think that's really what, a lot of those other pages, and they were great pages, but they just, they didn't have something to keep getting someone to come back. And that's, I think, why they've more or less either been absorbed into somewhere else, or, like you said, maybe they found better avenues through social media, like, this works better for us

• 23:32Speaker 04

  to have the content come here exclusively. And we do, yeah. We certainly also have the social media pages that are out there to help communicate, because that helps garner traffic from a different avenue as well. Because it's a lot easier nowadays to go out in social and say, hey, news, news, news, versus before, it's like, I hope you come back to my webpage when there's something new. So, yeah, it's a little bit different transition over the years.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you, you mentioned having a day job. I am going to assume McRib Locator is not your day job.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  No, it is not.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  But does it make enough money to sustain itself? Is this something that you just, you know, sort of pay for out of pocket? Do you have ads? How do you make money? Or do you make money on McRib Locator? What's the process there?

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the, the early years of the McRib Locator, there was absolutely no ads. I was like, I don't want ads on this thing. This is, this is what it is. And I'd pay for it out of pocket. And then over the years, it's like, well, you know, there's, if I put a couple of ads here and there, there's no, no reason, they can be there. They'll generate enough revenue to help pay for the page, and it does. There's a little bit in excess every year that I put back toward other ideas, like, you know, a number of years ago, we gave our McRib Locator pens, or other types of merchandise that people are really interested in. We, we tried to find these things that we can send out. We had stickers, we had, we've done various things over the years, like, give something back to the fans, because that's how you keep people interested. That's sort of what we've done with it. It's certainly not something I'm losing money on anymore, but it is certainly not something I'm looking to make tons of money on either,

• 24:57Speaker 04

  because I'm not, I'm not interested in doing that, per se.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  You're not buying a McDonald's with it?

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not trying to buy a McDonald's with it. I'm not, certainly not trying to do anything like that. I'm just, it's just keep it rolling as long as we can, because it's, it's one of those things, like you said, you never really know when the fanbase is going to say, well, eh, I've had enough.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Okay, we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back, we're gonna get really extra nerdy about the McRib, so stay tuned.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  All right, and we're back. I've got Alex here again.

• 26:07Alex Cranz?

  I'm just like, I don't know how I'm gonna survive. I gotta go get on some Uber Eats.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  If you're not eating a McRib by the end of this interview, I'm gonna be very disappointed.

• 26:16Alex Cranz?

  I really, really love how passionate Alan is about this. Like, he really loves the McRib, but also like, supporting the other fans of the McRib. And it, it kinda seems like he's gonna keep doing this as long as he can.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, the McRib is not around right now. It went on that farewell tour. And, you know, he's gonna keep the website up because he really thinks it's gonna come back someday.

• 26:39Alex Cranz?

  Uh huh.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  And it's pretty interesting. In the McRib fanbase, which is such a strange term, but it exists, there are actually a couple of different theories about predicting when the McRib might return. And I did a little bit of digging about this because I was very curious. I really fell into a McRib rabbit hole. And it seems like a really good way to predict the return or the retirement of the McRib is to keep an eye on the USDA's monthly cold storage report.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  You're laughing because it is the best thing I've ever heard in my life. And it's specifically stocks of frozen pork belly year over year. So the report comes out and people can look at the year over year stocks of frozen pork belly. And if there's a surplus, then maybe the McRib will be back. And if you start seeing it fall, then maybe the McRib goes away. And so it's a very interesting predictive. I won't say it's a tool because it's not always 100% accurate to the stocks. Yeah. But it is a generally good indicator of when it might come back. So I started wondering here if there were any plans on incorporating that data into the actual McRib locator website.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  So that people can kind of get a magic eight ball, kind of, you know, outlook, like not likely, you know, just sort of that. That like, hey, is the McRib going to come back soon? And just immediately have a thing that says like, no, predictions say maybe just maybe you're going to have to wait for McRib for a while. Outlook not so good. Yeah, outlook not so good, or like McRib imminent. Like, maybe that's like, you know, that seems really fun. So I asked Alan about that.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, that's a great avenue to follow. I've had people over the years contact me to get, again, get the anonymized data to say, hey, I would like to prove if this is a thing or not. And what they were always looking at more directly was the current pricing of hog market value. Because they would say, hey, look, the values are very low. So McDonald's is going to buy now. And it makes sense from a very pure financial perspective. Why would McDonald's buy when the market's high? They should always buy when it's low to maximize profits. That makes perfect sense from a business perspective. It's not something that I've directly keep an eyeball on because it's, it's hard to gauge, certainly over the last couple of years. With the way the meat markets have been fluctuating, not just pork, but just in general, to be able to say like, absolutely certain that's what's going to happen.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  But yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it would certainly be something worth tracking. And it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to do that, to say, hey, here's what we've had. A number of years ago, and it's been quite a few, where I would have someone from one of the meatpacking plants. They're like, hey, secret, secret, we're starting to make McRib patties.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Anonymous tips. I love this.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  It is literally the secret world of the McRib. And I, this is so interesting that you're get, you get anonymous tips from factories. That's incredible.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  Right, and that's certainly always been, again, understanding that the McRib is like this very, very niche thing, right? Like, you have people who really, really like it, and you have the other people who, like, I don't understand, why does this fanbase exist? But that's how anything is anymore. Like, with the modern era of internet, you can go out and find like-minded people that are really avid about something. And apparently, that's where they come to see my McRib locator.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  I think that brings me to kind of the penultimate question here, which is, the McRib, as we mentioned, is made with a mold. It is not a traditional, actual rib. It's boneless. There has been some speculation that now that the McRib has been retired once again, and we are seeing the rise of plant-based foods, that we may see the McRib return in a completely different form, which would be a plant-based McRib. I am curious as to your thoughts on that, and if it does come back as a plant-based McRib, and I'll paraphrase Shakespeare here, would a McRib by any other ingredient taste as sweet?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I've not really thought much about a plant-based-driven McRib-like product. Over the years, you know, I've seen people, just in general conversations, like, the sauce is different. It has to be different, or the bread has to be different. Like, there's been years where people pick up on subtlety of changes in the house produced. So I would suspect that fans switching to a plant-driven McRib, while some people would certainly be willing to try it, which I would be one, I'll try something once, I don't think it would probably garner the same fanbase. It's a little bit different group of people, right? There's nothing wrong with the plant-based-driven foods. It's just, that's not quite what everyone's looking for just yet. It is certainly an up-and-coming, and it's a very interesting idea to have this,

• 31:14Speaker 04

  again, it's a molded shape, so you could certainly make a plant-based-driven McRib-shaped item to serve. I'm just not sure if it would have the same popularity.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  I just realized what the name of this product should be, and I shouldn't laugh at my own jokes, but, I mean, it's right there, McDonald's. You gotta name it the McFib.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  The McFib, yes.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  If they do that, you owe me a lot of money McDonald's if you call them McFit. If they ever did that, let's say they split it and they said, we're going to make the McRib, but we're also going to make this plant-based McRib. Would you continue to only support the authentic McRib? Or would you say, okay, well, now we have two different types of McRibs and we'll have it, you know, we'll have identifiers for those at each location because maybe one in Silver Lake here in Los Angeles maybe only has the plant-based McRib and not the meat-based one. Or maybe ones in other parts of the country would not carry the plant-based one and vice versa.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  No, that's absolutely something that would be worth tracking and it wouldn't take, again, nothing is a terrible amount of effort. So doing something like that would make a lot of sense because there certainly would be the fans in a much more restricted, much more limited release of a product. Having that availability would be very helpful because again, you can use the McDonald's app in general when things have been on the market for a while to find things. But it's generally trying to find you the closest store where like the McRib locator, it's where's this pocket at? Because honestly, like if you're going to make some sort of journey, which there've been many people take very long journeys years ago. Somebody went from Colorado, clear down, I forget how many hours they went to go bring back a big ton of, no, big ton isn't quite the right phrasing, but they brought back a lot of McRibs back to the Colorado market because they hadn't had it.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  So you don't want to make that journey if it's not available. So being able to see like there's a pocket of them here or a pocket of them there. You have that boost of confidence of I'll get there, it'll still be there. Now, in that same mindset, I always suggest people, even with the webpage for what it is, you know, if it's getting late in the season, it's usually best to give a little buzz ahead to make sure they're still there. Because again, my reports on the page, they're at that moment of time. So after so many days, they, you know, maybe isn't as accurate anymore.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  I know that there has been some speculation that McDonald's will let the McRib rest this year, that we may not see it back. How do you recover users? How do you, how do you get the word out when the McRib's been gone for a long enough time to sort of exit the collective awareness of it?

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Right. And it's really about trying to find that information to tell someone that it's going to come back. Because if you can share that, like through the social media avenues, like it's coming back, come back to the webpage, that's our best avenues. We also get pickups and as the news in general picks up on a McRib possibility, it drives people back to that curiosity of, hey, I remember that webpage I used to go to, let's go see if it's still there. Like, you know, hey, maybe it's still there. And hey, look, there's data there that I can look at to say that I can go get a McRib now. And it's kind of a fun journey in that way.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  What is the most amount of users, unique visitors you've had in a day?

• 34:18Speaker 04

  In a particular day, I'd have to go back and look. I mean, I can tell you this, last year in October, for the month of October, we had about 200,000 unique users on the webpage at some point during the month.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Man, that's a lot of McRib fans.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  It's a lot of people coming to look to see what's going on. And I think the individual days was, you know, tens of thousands, probably. Because again, as people pick up on the news outlets that say, hey, McRib's back, they start searching for McRib, right? And, and the search is happening and one of those results is going to be the McRib locator and they're gonna go, oh, cool. Let me go check that out. And that's where those, you know, fans helping each other really comes into play, because people are very curious when it's back. Where can I find it?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I love this cycle of boom and bust, the McRib boom and bust cycle, the bell curve of, of the McRib.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  But you're right, there's always this constant concern, like, maybe it won't be back this year. You know, I'm, I'm disappointed as a fan myself, I'm disappointed as the operator of the webpage, but it's still like, ah, we'll see how it goes. You know, as a fan, obviously, I want to be nationwide every year, because I want people to be able to get it wherever they can. And in the same token, as a, as a webpage, you know, when it's more restricted, I get more traffic. So it's that kind of catch of, well, which one's right? And I've always preferred, you know, get it wherever you can.

• 35:37Alex Cranz?

  Okay, thank you. That is it for the Vergecast this week. Although, Ashley, I gotta say, McFib?

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Alex, look, no one's setting me any royalties. Everyone on Earth has thought of McFib. I realized this the second the interview was over. And I was like, oh, no, everyone's gonna just think I'm the dumbest human being alive.

• 35:55Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I don't judge you. I do a lot of puns on the show. So like, anything pun-adjacent, I'm here for. Thank you. I appreciate it.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Me too. And honestly, I really hope that, beyond the absolutely terrible McFib, I hope that you all out there listening learned something today, not just about the McRib, but also about how one person can create a useful tool for a passionate community. Because Alan really is so passionate, and it is a useful tool for anybody looking for the McRib.

• 36:22Alex Cranz?

  Well, thank you, Ashley. She's gonna be back next week with another episode of Solo Axe, because we're doing this special series every Monday for the next few weeks. What's going on next week?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  I'm very excited. Next week, we are gonna be talking to a solo game developer. Her name is Madison Carr, and she has a game that actually just launched called Birth. She just launched it on Steam very recently. And she is gonna talk to us about making games all by yourself, which is quite a feat. All video games are miracles. I've said this many times. And to do it alone is pretty outstanding. And she has a lot of great things to say about the Steam Deck, and indie games, and a lot of other things that go into making a game by yourself.

• 37:05Alex Cranz?

  Well, I am terrifically excited. I can't wait to listen.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  It's gonna be great.

• 37:10Alex Cranz?

  This show is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Brooke Menters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, you can always email us at [email protected] or call the hotline at 866-VERGE11. That's 866-VERGE11. We'll be back on Wednesday for an all-new episode of The Vergecast. Until then, stay classy.

• 37:44Speaker 06

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• 38:27Speaker 06

  you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.