McDonald’s is looking to potentially beef up its offerings with a bigger burger.

CFO Ian Borden said Tuesday McDonald’s has “created a larger satiating burger” as the fast-food giant “look[s] to further build on our leadership in beef.”

“We’ll be testing this burger in a few markets later this year, ensuring that it has universal appeal before scaling it across the globe,” he added.

The fast-food chain said earlier this year its beef and chicken categories have become roughly neck-and-neck in annual systemwide sales, coming in at about $25 billion each. 

MCDONALD’S TO SELL KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS NATIONWIDE

McDonald’s USA told FOX Business it had no additional details about the larger burger when reached Tuesday afternoon for comment.

The fast-food giant, whose footprint spanned over 41,800 locations at the end of 2023, has previously indicated it was working on larger burgers.

“We’re addressing an unmet customer need across markets for larger high-quality burgers,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said in early February. “We’re working horizontally across the system to innovate. As we test and learn, we’ll be working to understand how the new offering will complement our already established burgers, like the Double QPC [Quarter Pounder with Cheese] or the Big Tasty.”

In late January, U.S. locations added the Double Big Mac and its four beef patties to menus for a “limited time.” 

MCDONALD’S EVOLUTION FROM DRIVE-IN TO GLOBAL FAST-FOOD ICON

Over the past year, McDonald’s has made various changes to its popular cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, hamburger, McDouble and Big Mac.

The tweaks, made through its “Best Burger” initiative, aimed to make burgers “hotter,” “juicier” and “tastier,” the fast-food chain has said. It kicked off that program in early 2023.  

Borden said Tuesday that McDonald’s has already rolled out the “Best Burger” initiative at over 80% of the fast-food chain’s locations, including those across the U.S.

CALIFORNIA MCDONALD’S FRANCHISEE SHARES STRUGGLE WITH ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ IMPACT OF NEW MINIMUM WAGE 

It has its sights set on incorporating the updated burgers at almost all locations before the end of 2026, according to the CFO.

The Big Mac and Quarter Pounder are among the 17 menu items McDonald’s has said are each worth $1 billion. 

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Homeownership is out of reach for most Americans in the majority of the largest cities nationwide.

New findings from Clever Real Estate show that 44 of the 50 biggest metro areas in the U.S. do not have prices low enough to be considered affordable for the median-earning household. 

A home is considered “affordable” for the typical family if it costs no more than 28% of a household’s annual income. But for the vast majority of cities, that is not enough to be able to buy a median home at the median local income – even when posting a 20% down payment, according to the study.

HOME PRICES SURGE TO ANOTHER RECORD HIGH IN FEBRUARY

There are just six cities where the median-priced home is affordable for median-income earners: 

For instance, in Pittsburgh, the median home sells for about $199,573; after a 20% down payment, the mortgage – including taxes and insurance – comes out to roughly $1,398 per month. In order to be able to afford that, a person needs to earn a minimum of $59,919 per year – which is lower than the median household income of $70,607 in Pittsburgh.

But the overwhelming majority of cities are unaffordable for buyers, with a large gap between suggested income to afford a house and actual income. 

Los Angeles, San Jose, California, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Miami and Riverside, California, ranked as the worst cities for first-time buyers. 

Los Angeles is the least affordable city in the country. It requires an income of $249,471 to comfortably afford a median-priced home – but the actual median income in the city is less than half of that, at $87,743.

WHY CAN’T YOU FIND A HOME FOR SALE?

There are a number of driving forces behind the affordability crisis. Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials.

Higher mortgage rates over the past three years have created a “golden handcuff” effect in the housing market. Sellers who locked in a record-low mortgage rate of 3% or less during the pandemic began have been reluctant to sell, limiting supply further and leaving few options for eager would-be buyers.

Economists predict that mortgage rates will remain elevated for the first half of 2024 and that they will only begin to fall once the Federal Reserve starts cutting rates. Even then, rates are unlikely to return to the lows seen during the pandemic. On top of that, investors are growing skeptical about the odds of a Fed rate hike this year given the string of hotter-than-expected inflation reports at the beginning of the year.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on a 30-year loan climbed to 7.17% from 7.1% the prior week. While that is down from a peak of 7.79% in the fall, it remains sharply higher than the pandemic-era lows of just 3%.

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Available home supply remains down a stunning 34.3% from the typical amount before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, according to a separate report published by Realtor.com.

Most homeowners say they are nearly twice as willing to sell their home if their mortgage rate is 5% or higher, according to a separate Zillow survey. Currently, about 80% of mortgage holders have a rate below 5%.

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The Biden administration is continuing its mass student loan handouts as, on Wednesday, it announced another $6 billion that it would be giving to borrowers ahead of the 2024 election.

“Today, my Administration is approving $6.1 billion in student debt cancellation for 317,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes,” President Biden said Wednesday.

In the statement, the president and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona described the Art Institutes as “predatory” and said the new handouts would help students who were victims of their actions.

“This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students, and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies,” Biden said.

FOOD COSTS SOAR AS BIDEN HANDS OUT MASSIVE $7.4B FOR STUDENT LOANS

Biden’s newest handout lifts the number of total student loans forgiven by the administration to $160 billion, the White House said. This has impacted nearly 4.6 million borrowers.

“Over the last three years, my Administration has approved nearly $29 billion in debt relief for 1.6 million borrowers whose colleges took advantage of them, closed abruptly, or were covered by related court settlements, compared to just 53,500 borrowers who had ever gotten their debt cancelled through these types of actions before I took office,” Biden said Wednesday.

He continued: “Today’s announcement builds on all we’ve done to fix broken student loan programs and bring higher education more in reach. That includes: providing the largest increases to the maximum Pell Grant in over a decade; fixing Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income Driven Repayment so borrowers get the relief they are entitled to under the law, launching the SAVE Plan – the most affordable repayment plan ever, and pursuing new plans that would cancel student debt for more than 30 million Americans when combined with everything we’ve done so far.”

BIDEN’S LATEST STUDENT LOAN HANDOUTS COULD COST AS MUCH AS $750B

Biden also renewed his vow not to stop handing out money to borrowers and make college more affordable to more students: “We will never stop fighting to deliver relief to borrowers, hold bad actors accountable, and bring the promise of college to more Americans.”

In Wednesday’s announcement, Secretary Cardona said the Biden administration was working with various states to pursue legal action against greedy schools.

“For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of hopeful students borrowed billions to attend The Art Institutes and got little but lies in return. That ends today—thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s work with the attorneys general offices of Iowa, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania,” said Cardona. “We must continue to protect borrowers from predatory institutions—and work toward a higher education system that is affordable to students and taxpayers.”

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Federal Student Aid Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray, who operates under the Department of Education, similarly said the administration was dedicated to restoring borrowers’ trust in educational institutions.

“The Art Institutes preyed on the hopes of students attempting to better their lives through education,” said Federal Student Aid Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray. “We cannot replace the time stolen from these students, but we can lift the burden of their debt. We remain committed to working with our federal and state partners to protect borrowers.”

The relief will be automatically applied to those who qualify, the administration said.

It comes as students at colleges and universities across the U.S. are forming encampments and marches to protest Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

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Home Depot has restocked its viral 12-foot tall skeleton and other Halloween decorations, but a limited amount are available and many items are already sold...