McDonald's Workers Don't Squirt Ketchup From A Bottle

You don't get to the top of the fast food chain without consistency in every step of the kitchen process, and McDonald's is at the top of the burger game. The company, which currently operates nearly 42,000 locations across the globe that are largely franchisee-owned, doesn't have its cooks flipping burgers; instead, it uses clamshell grills set to a timer that correlates to each type of burger, so every beef patty comes out exactly the same. This need for consistency is also the reason why McDonald's workers don't manually squirt the ketchup from a regular bottle. Rather, they use a special dispensing gun that puts out an exact amount of the tomato-based condiment every time.

Ketchup might not be the most expensive ingredient in the world, but when you're running a burger chain with literally tens of thousands of locations, employees putting even just the slightest bit extra — when it's not called for — will eventually add up, leading to higher inventory orders and ultimately higher overall costs. To mitigate this, McDonald's has equipped its kitchen staff with precise condiment dispensing tools, which all but removes the possibility of extra ketchup being placed when it's not desired.

The sauce gun also ensures consistency, placing five perfect dots on the burger every time with just a push of a lever, which only requires one hand to operate. This means that you aren't getting a tiny little squirt of ketchup if you visit a McDonald's in Maine, and then a whole bucketful when ordering from New York (or even a different country).

It might not surprise you to learn that all of McDonald's condiments, not just the ketchup, are dispensed in this fashion for the same reasons listed above: portion control and product consistency. The mustard gun is actually just like the ketchup dispenser (both tend to be manufactured by a company called Prince Castle, and you can buy them on the Web Restaurant Store for a cool $160 if you're so inclined), in that you can use it with a single hand, and it's kind of shaped like an elongated Oklahoma.

These dispensers are color-coded with a yellow lever for mustard and red for ketchup, but they're also see-through enough that you can spot the different condiments through the reservoir. Another thing about the mustard guns is that they're calibrated to release much less of the yellow condiment than the ketchup ones, due to the mustard being much stronger in flavor.

The condiment dispensers for mayonnaise, Big Mac sauce (which is not just Thousand-Island dressing), and tartar sauce are a little different from the ones for ketchup and mustard, though. These require two hands to use, and they resemble those canisters used at drive-thru banks, which transport your materials through a tube from your car to the bank teller, but with a dispensing lever at the top. Further, they release the condiment in question in a single dollop, rather than a set of individual dots.