The Surprisingly Interesting Story Behind the Filet-O-Fish Sandwich

The Filet-O-Fish is one of the more curious items on the McDonald's menu in that it receives virtually no advertising whatsoever, yet still continues to be sold by the chain despite the fact that nobody ever seems to order one, and it's been a problem item for years in the company due to difficulty finding a sustainable, tasty source of fish meat.

at the volume the beer moth needs, as well as the fact that you have to cook it in a separate fryer from other items.

As it turns out, they keep it around because the fillet of fish is actually intended to be eaten by a very specific type of customer, people who abstain from eating non-seafood meat for various reasons.

According to McDonald's executives, approximately 23% of the Filet-O-Fish sandwiches sold by the chain each year are sold during Lent.

While the exact rules vary somewhat from region to region, in general Catholics traditionally abstain from eating most meats on Fridays and Saturdays during this period.

In some regions, the requirement is even that members of the Church avoid non-seafood meat on every single Friday of the year.

Moving on, or rather back, the genesis of the Filet-O-Fish came way back in the early days of the future fast food king.

You can see our video on Who Is McDonald in McDonald's for more about that.

In 1960, at a small McDonald's restaurant in Ohio, the owner of the franchise, a man called Lou Groen, was struggling to keep his restaurant open.

No stranger to troubles or hard work, Groen had been kicked out of his home by his father as a teenager.

His mother abandoned the family when he was three years old to pursue an ill-fated career as an actress in Hollywood.

Homeless during the Great Depression with no real skills to speak of, and occasionally having to steal food to survive, Groen did eventually find work, and then continued to better his situation by simply working harder than everyone else around him.

Fast forward a couple of decades and he found himself the president of the Cincinnati Restaurant Association.

It was in this position that he had a chance encounter with one Ray Kroc.

the god-king of the McDonald's empire, which led to Groan taking his life savings, as well as borrowing some money from a few friends, and starting a McDonald's franchise in 1959.

Unfortunately for Groan, this was a time when pretty much no one had heard of McDonald's and he was competing with a lot of other restaurants that sold more or less the exact same thing as he did, burgers.

As a result of all this, this hardworking father of two was barely able to keep the then-fledgling franchise location open.

As Groen would later recall, I was struggling.

The crew was my wife, myself, and a man named George.

I did repairs, swept floors, you name it.

Needless to say, despite working from sunup to sundown and relying on the free labor of his family, times were tough, especially on Fridays, a day which would normally be the most lucrative day of the week for most restaurants.

You see, Groen's Restaurant was located in an area that was 87% Catholic.

At that time in the United States, most Catholics abstained from eating land or air-based meat products every Friday of the year, not just during certain days of the week during as is more common today.

The result? According to Groen, his restaurant barely grossed $75 a Friday.

After factoring in franchise cuts, product cuts, building bills, etc., he might as well have just started closing on Fridays.