A McDonald’s executive takes you inside the viral Grimace Shake trend and how the burger giant dealt with it

For those who don’t remember what life on the internet looked like in 2023, here’s a refresher: girl dinner, the Roman Empire, and a TikTok algorithm painted purple from the McDonald’s Grimace Shake.

The trend was simple, albeit strange: Users would film themselves trying out the purple McDonald’s beverage and then immediately cut to a horror-movie scene of their staged death.

The purple vanilla-berry-flavored milkshake was rolled out by the fast-food chain in June of that...