McDonald’s BTS Meal Hack
K-Pop fans and the fast food industry rejoiced this week, as BTS and McDonald’s released the latest in celebrity meal collabs — The BTS Meal.
Just over month ago, McDonald’s and BTS announced they would pair up to provide a branded meal. The formula of celebrity + meal has already been wildly popular for both celebrity and food chain. J Balvin’s Big Mac sans pickles + McFlurry and Travis Scott’s Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon, and lettuce blew up pandemic ordering, so much so McDonald’s suffered a burger shortage during the latter.
The BTS Meal will most likely go down as having the most sold. Not only are they globally popular, they are throwing down a 10 piece chicken McNuggets. Every picky child and adult will eat a McNugget. Medium fries and large Coke round out the order. The piece de resistance is adding in sauce flavors that were not available to the US market until now — Cajun and Sweet Chili.
Some of you will whine “but we’ve had sweet chili before”. Yes, we have. And then out of nowhere McDonald’s snatched it away, like stealing an old security blanket from an aging toddler. But thanks to BTS, your blanket was found in the attic in a sealed container, just as fresh as before. Cajun is new to the US, to my knowledge. The sweet chili sauce is exactly what it sounds like. A sweet dark red sauce with a fiery chili kick, but not enough to kill you. Cajun isn’t nearly as spicy, and resembles/tastes like Chick Fil A sauce (which for those not in the know is a mix of bbq sauce, honey mustard, and ranch). Each of the new sauces are labeled in purple and pink respectively, along with their Korean translation into Hangul below the English.
One additional perk is for those ordering in the McDonald’s app. Each week for 4 weeks will provide virtual “behind the scenes” content. Think of this as your 21st century version of a non-gender specific Happy Meal toy. Some 360 footage, a “flip” book, and some portraits of the guys.
You are by now wondering what the “hack” is. Get the meal cheaper by using the app!
The vast majority of time, the McDonald’s app contains coupons in the Deals section. For example, Friday is a day where you can get a free medium fry with purchase. Buy one get one free items. You get the idea.
Currently in among the deals is a 10 piece McNugget for half off. You add that deal to your cart and then select your Cajun and Sweet Chili sauces. Add a fry and drink of your choice to your order and voila —you have a BTS Meal cheaper than just ordering the BTS Meal. In the DFW market, the BTS Meal is $7.99 plus tax (nuggets, medium fries, and large drink). If you upgrade to a large fries it’s $8.89 plus tax. Using my hack, with the large fries upgrade, the meal comes out to $6.58 plus tax.
Depending on where you live you are saving yourself well over $2 by ordering it this way. Of course, it will not work if the nugget coupon isn’t there. If you are super hungry, they usually have a $5 20 piece deal on the app. You also get a free large fry for being a first time user of the app, which I do recommend if you’ve not used it. You can still choose to pick up in the drive thru, curbside, or in store. It also keeps track if you buy 5 McCafe items, you get 1 free.
I hope you enjoy my hack. It is my gift to you, since you can be sure McDonald’s doesn’t want me to tell you how to save money, when you could pay full price. Although, it’s free advertising for them. So maybe they should throw me a bone…or a McNugget.
Enjoy your BTS Meal, and don’t add butter.
