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Boxed meals are SOP for KFC and the rest of the chicken category, which has been putting chicken-for-many in buckets and boxes for years. But the burger category has been slow to adopt the idea, likely because cold chicken is fine but cold burgers are not. But now the tight marketplace has convinced McDonald's to try it. The boxed meal takes the best part of the combo meal inclusion of higher-profit sides and beverages and doubles or triples that element. Operators love that. In recent years, the pizza giants have tried to add variety to their bulk food offerings with everything from bread sticks to pasta. At the same time, Burger king has begun delivery service at select stores in some urban markets, which among other things can encourage huge orders.
McDonald's introduced the multi-person Dinner Box meals in Australia in March 2010. These have various combinations of cheeseburgers, Big Macs and Quarter Pounders with fries and Nuggets. It subsequently tried a chicken version and a two-person mates meal version for lunch in 2011. McDonald's has since tried a Family Breakfast multi-person bix in Malaysia and a McBox family meal box in Czech Republic. But the overall restaurant industry trend has generally been in the opposite direction away from bulk, family meals and toward more personalized offerings that are slightly upscaled typically for $1 or $2 more. Even KFC has slowly moved away from pushing its family buckets and increasingly markets individual eats.