McDonald's teases Snack Wrap return date — sort of

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — McDonald's has finally teased a re-release date for a once-popular menu item. Kind of.

In a relatively cryptic post to X on Tuesday, the fast-food chain announced the beloved Snack Wraps would return on the 14th. However, the company didn't reveal which month the fan-favorite item would return, just that it would be sometime this year.

When fans started guessing release dates in the comments of McDonald's X post, the company only offered cheeky responses like, "I cannot confirm or deny or confirm."

In December, Joe Erlinger, U.S. president for McDonald's, confirmed that Snack Wraps would return in 2025, saying the discontinued items have somewhat of a "cult-following."

Then in February, McDonald's president and CEO Chris Kempczinski acknowledged the "incredible energy for the return of Snack Wraps in the U.S." but didn't share much else (he also shared that a "new chicken strip offering" was planned for U.S. restaurants).

"My U.S. team would kill me if I gave any more details about the when and the exact specifics of how we're going to plan on doing that, but certainly expect that to come online later in the year," Kempczinski said during a call with investors.

It’s been several years since Snack Wraps were available in the U.S. The wraps — variations of which can still be found internationally — contained chicken, lettuce, and cheese all wrapped in a warm tortilla. They launched in 2006 and were later followed by an Angus offering. The latter was dropped in 2013 as McDonald’s made menu changes, while the original Snack Wrap was removed in 2016 over complaints that it took too long to make.

Some individual franchises held onto the Snack Wraps, but in 2020, the offerings were removed from all U.S. McDonald’s restaurants. In the years since, there have been petitions, social media campaigns, and even failed attempts to use celebrity endorsements of the Snack Wraps as leverage to bring them back.

McDonald’s did tease a new iteration of the Snack Wraps in 2023, announcing that it would expand its chicken meals to meet consumers’ demands. That included expanding the McCrispy “to nearly all markets across the world by the end of 2025 and expand McCrispy into wraps and tenders.”

That means Kempczinski’s announcement isn’t exactly the first we’ve heard tenders were planned for the Golden Arches.

Food influencers who were able to try the McCrispy Chicken Strips — tested in Hickory, North Carolina, last year — described the tenders as crispier than the McCrispy Chicken Sandwich with different breading than the buttermilk chicken tenders previously sold by McDonald’s, Southern Living reports.

The Buttermilk Crispy Tenders were released in 2017 following a two-year tender hiatus (earlier in the 2010s, you could find Chicken Select Tenders on McDonald’s menus, which were added in the early 2000s). In 2020, the Buttermilk Crispy Tenders were pulled from U.S. McDonald’s restaurants.

Like the Snack Wraps, international McDonald’s restaurants already have chicken strips. In Malta, for example, they’re described as “a succulent chicken breast, rolled into a crispy batter and fried to golden perfection, together with a sauce of your choice."