MIAMI — Burger King president Tom Curtis ate a hamburger on camera this week, and the fast food industry has not fully recovered.
The video, 13 seconds long, contains: Tom Curtis. A Whopper. Tom Curtis eating the Whopper. A large bite. Chewing that appears genuine. No grimace. No cut. No off-screen promise to finish the burger later. The caption: “Thought we’d replay this.”
That is the entire communication. There is no other content. There are no further statements. Burger King has not elaborated. Tom Curtis has not elaborated. The Whopper has not been asked to comment and, as a burger, has not done so.
And yet, in the context of the week’s events — specifically, the viral spread of McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski’s promotional video in which he took what the internet agreed was the minimum legally viable bite of the company’s new Big Arch burger and then announced he would be finishing his lunch somewhere the camera could not see — Curtis’s 13 seconds of unadorned sandwich consumption became the loudest thing said by any fast food executive in recent memory.
“We can confirm that this video was not created in reaction to anything,” a Burger King spokesperson told reporters, in a sentence that is technically possible.
The Week In Fast Food Executive Eating
The competitive eating — strictly in the promotional, non-competitive sense — did not stop with Burger King. Wendy’s followed two days later with a video of its U.S. president, Pete Suerken, consuming a Baconator. The accompanying LinkedIn caption read: “Lots of chatter this week about burgers. Thought we’d remind everyone what fresh, never frozen tastes like.”
Wendy’s then reposted to X with the addition: “This is what it looks like when you don’t have to pretend to like your ‘product.'”
Wendy’s also, in a move that Chad Exposé describes as aggressive and A&W Canada describes as inspired, announced the creation of a new position: Chief Tasting Officer, offering a $100,000 salary to anyone willing to make video reviews of Wendy’s food. No experience required. No qualifications required. The job posting implies but does not state that the ability to take a full-sized bite is considered an asset.
A&W Canada posted what industry observers are calling “the most pointed parody video” in the chain’s history — the specifics of which require a context for Canadian fast food competition that Supposedly News will not attempt to establish in a single paragraph but which landed, by all accounts, very well.
Ryanair, an airline that was not asked to weigh in and has no obvious stake in the hamburger industry, posted a photo of one of its plane seats with the caption: “passengers love this product.” This received significant engagement. Ryanair’s social media account operates on a philosophy of antagonism that has, over the years, proven more effective than sincerity for reasons that marketing professors find professionally upsetting.
Mini Cooper wrote on Instagram: “Gonna start test driving our cars 1 metre at a time.” This is a good joke.
What This Is Actually About
The pile-on is funny. It is also, when examined, about something more specific than a small bite.
What made Kempczinski’s video unsettling to the four and a half million people who watched it was not the bite size, exactly — it was the performance of enthusiasm that sat at an uncomfortable distance from actual enthusiasm. The vocabulary of corporate investor presentations applied to a hamburger. The word “product” where the word “burger” should have been. The technical delivery of a man who had been told what enjoyment looks like and was replicating its surface features without apparent access to its content.
People eat McDonald’s food. A lot of people eat McDonald’s food. What they do not want, while eating it, is to be reminded that it is a product moving through a supply chain that terminates, for promotional purposes, in their mouth. They know this. They prefer not to have it narrated.
Tom Curtis eating a Whopper for 13 seconds without narrating the experience reminded people what the alternative looks like. Wendy’s saying “you don’t have to pretend” gave the observation a caption. The rest of the industry applied the dog pile with the enthusiasm of competitors who had been waiting, possibly for years, for an opening this clear.
McDonald’s Response
McDonald’s has not formally responded to its competitors’ videos. The Big Arch burger launched as planned. It has 1,020 calories. Sales data has not been released. The company’s social media team is doing the best they can with the material available, which includes an CEO who has not commented, a burger that has received enormous earned media, and a comment section that has been, on balance, more engaged than most promotional campaigns generate.
There is an argument — made by several marketing analysts this week — that the whole thing has worked out reasonably well for McDonald’s. The Big Arch burger is now one of the most discussed fast food products in America. People are talking about it. Some of them are going to try it. Some of those people will take, presumably, larger bites than the CEO.
Whether this was the plan is a question that McDonald’s has declined to answer.
Whether Tom Curtis ate that Whopper on purpose is a question that Burger King has answered definitively: no comment, here is 13 seconds of a man eating a burger, draw your own conclusions, we can confirm the video was not created in reaction to anything, and Burger King thanks you for your interest in the Whopper.
The Whopper was not available for comment. It was eaten.
Chad Exposé, Investigative Reporter, covers corporate communications and the gap between what companies say and what companies mean. This week the gap was sandwich-sized. He found it manageable.