Viral ex-McDonald’s chef reveals three big food secrets you don’t know about

A former McDonald’s chef took to TikTok to reveal three key things about the chain that might just surprise you. 

Mike Haracz is a former corporate McDonald’s chef who has gone viral countless times on the platform. His videos vary from supermarket dupe recommendations for some of your favorite menu items, to secret ingredients used by the chain. 

In one of his latest videos, Mike revealed three little-known facts about the food served at McDonalds. 

The first surrounded the chain’s pies. According to Mike, McDonald’s only has one supplier for their popular pie-based desserts. 

According to an article from AP news in 2018, Bama Companies Inc. is the exclusive pie supplier for all 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States. The article claims that the Tulsa food maker produces more than 2 million pies per day.

The next secret had to do with food safety. “Most things are cooked to 165 degrees. But when you set cook times and temperatures for food safety, you have to put in a buffer to make sure that if you get the biggest chicken nugget, and it is cooked in the worst efficient fryer, that it will still be cooked all the way through,” Haracz explained. 

This results in higher average cooking temperatures that are 10 or 15 degrees higher, he told viewers. “It will be well overcooked for food safety,” he asserted. 

Thirdly, Mike described a large training space previously operated by McDonald’s, now closed. It operated according to statistics from different McDonald’s locations, allowing crewmembers who were in training to imitate a busy day at a specific location.

“It would be like walking onto a movie set and seeing all these multiple kitchens with all this action and people lined up like they’re going through drive-thrus,” he claimed in the video. 

After the video was posted on the platform, people were excited by some of the little-known tidbits Mike shared in the video. One viewer wrote: “I’d love to go to that test kitchen and see how it’d be doing a Time Square during peak hours rush.”

“I find this stuff super interesting! The McDonald’s corporation is absolutely wild!” another added. 

“Could that replication kitchen really replicate the Karen at the counter screaming at you because someone forgot her fries?” a third joked. 

In another one of Mike’s videos released in June, he told customers why the $5 meal deal released by McDonald’s was a smart business decision even if it meant losing out on money.