'You're the chef': Fast-food chains embrace menu hackers' creative combinations

Some are as simple as coating chicken nuggets in a blend of barbecue and ghost pepper sauces — nicknamed "cowboy caviar" — but others take things to a new level, like dropping pie or mini cinnamon sugar doughnuts into a milkshake or ensconcing a hotdog in onion rings.

Menu hacks rarely escape Meera Patel.

The marketing director for fast-food chain Harvey’s keeps a growing list of ways customers mash together or transform menu items into something new.

Some are as simple as coating chicken nuggets in a blend of barbecue and ghost pepper sauces — nicknamed "cowboy caviar" — but others take things to a new level, like dropping pie or mini cinnamon sugar doughnuts into a milkshake or ensconcing a hotdog in onion rings.

"Two weeks ago, when I was in a restaurant for a (photo) shoot, someone ordered our bacon double-cheese poutine with just an Angus burger patty and then cut up the Angus patty and put it into the poutine," said Patel.

"There are some crazy things out there that people are doing."

Conventional wisdom might view such combinations at fast-food chains as an irritant. They can add complexity and delays to the ultra-streamlined processes restaurants have perfected to quickly pump out items that taste the same no matter what location you order them at.

But chains are increasingly embracing hacks — in most cases, as long as diners build the dishes themselves — and letting the most raved-about concoctions shape their menus, marketing, equipment and training.