McDonald’s announces spinoff restaurant chain CosMc’s

A new fast-food restaurant spun off from McDonald’s is in the works, the company announced in a recent earnings call to investors, and its name comes from a space-alien mascot from another era.

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The new chain will be called CosMc’s, which is a reference to a McDonald’s character from the 1980s that the chain plans to revive. For context, here’s a video of Ronald McDonald and Friends and the story of CosMc:

In this 1987 commercial, Ronald, Grimace and The Professor are traveling down a “Wizard of Oz”-like path in McDonaldland when they come upon what Grimace thinks is a silver flower pot.

Instead, it’s CosMc, an alien who dropped in from outer space on a trade mission. He likes to “trade” things, and without Ronald’s permission, he quickly trades a flower bouquet for Ronald’s lunch of burgers, fries and shakes.

What was Ronald to do?!

“I’ll save our lunch with a McMagnet!” Ronald cries. He pulls the metallic alien back with the restaurant’s golden arches turned sideways. CosMc then suggests they share the lunch, which he deems “deliciously awesome.”

There’s no word yet on what kind of food will be served — only that the restaurant will launch in early 2024 and that it is starting small.

“CosMc’s is a small format concept with all the DNA of McDonald’s, but with its own unique personality,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a recent earnings call. The company says it will launch at a small number of sites in “a limited geography.” More details are coming at the end of this year.

McDonald’s may have learned a lesson from the wildly popular response to its Grimace birthday meal and shake — that other decades-old character whose shakes inspired millions of TikTok users to create dark but hilarious horror videos. “Grimace has been everywhere in the past few months,” Kempszinksi said. “This viral phenomenon is yet another proof point of the power of marketing at McDonald’s today.”

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What do you think McDonald’s will serve at CosMc?