McDonald’s offers free fries in app deal for National Fry Day

McDonald’s will hand out free medium fries in its app on National Fry Day, but only with a $1 minimum purchase, for Rewards members, at participating restaurants and with one redemption per person. The offer lands on July 10, and it fits a pattern McDonald’s has been building for years: use the app to pull traffic, steer orders into digital channels and keep value offers tied to loyalty.

That matters on the floor because fries are one of McDonald’s most visible items and one of the easiest ways to turn a promotion into a rush. A free-fry deal can change the order mix fast, sending more small baskets through the line while adding questions about redemption, timing and app access at the counter and drive-thru. The company’s own app page says customers get exclusive perks, Mobile Order & Pay, special deals and coupons, plus MyMcDonald’s Rewards points that can be redeemed for free food.

McDonald’s has been pushing that behavior hard. In June 2024, it said Free Fries Friday had already generated more than 20 million redemptions that year, and in 2025 it said the free medium fries offer with any $1 minimum purchase would run every Friday through the end of the year. The company also said in December 2023 that its loyalty program had 150 million 90-day active users and was headed toward 250 million by 2027. By August 2025, McDonald’s said it had surpassed 185 million 90-day active loyalty users across 60 markets.

Behind the scenes, fries are not a casual add-on. McDonald’s says World Famous Fries start as whole potatoes that are peeled, cut, blanched, par-fried, frozen and shipped to restaurants. The company said the U.S. system bought 2.8 billion pounds of potatoes in 2024 and more than $5.9 billion of ingredients overall. That scale is part of why a free-fries promotion is more than a marketing trick. It is a throughput decision that reaches from supplier orders to the person bagging the meal on a lunch rush.

McDonald’s has tied its loyalty tools to a larger digital experience strategy, describing MyMcDonald’s Rewards as part of its “digital experience growth engine.” The company has also said U.S. loyalty members more than double their visits in the first year after joining. For crews and managers, that means app-based deals are no longer a side campaign. They are becoming part of how McDonald’s plans traffic, trains customers and sets the pace of the shift.