CHICAGO — It has been five weeks since McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski told the world he was going to enjoy the rest of his lunch, and the rest of his lunch has still not been accounted for.
The incident began February 3rd, when Kempczinski — trim, sweater-vested, operating with the energy of a man who had been briefed on what a hamburger is but had not previously encountered one in the wild — posted a promotional video to his Instagram account showcasing the company’s new Big Arch burger. In the video, Kempczinski expressed admiration for the burger using a series of vague superlatives, referred to it as a “product” with a frequency that grew more unsettling with each repetition, said “holy cow” upon seeing it as though confronting a geological formation, and then took a bite.
The bite was — and Brent Eyewitness will choose his words carefully here, as a journalist committed to precision — a bite in the technical, minimal, legally defensible sense of the term. It was a bite the way a notch in a pencil is carpentry. It was a bite that raised, among the four and a half million people who subsequently watched the video, the sincere and unresolved question of whether the burger could tell.
“That’s a big bite for a Big Arch,” Kempczinski said immediately afterward, establishing an alternative definition of the word “big” that physicists are still reviewing.
He then told the camera he was going to “enjoy the rest of his lunch,” the camera cut, and Chris Kempczinski and the Big Arch burger were never publicly seen together again.
The Investigation
Supposedly News has spent the past week attempting to determine the whereabouts of the remainder of the lunch. Our efforts have included: reviewing Kempczinski’s subsequent Instagram posts (several subsequent burger appearances, notably larger bites, that critics describe as “too convenient” and “compensatory”); submitting a media inquiry to McDonald’s, which declined to comment; and consulting with a forensic food analyst who confirmed that the bite mark visible in the promotional video represents, at most, 3% of the available burger surface area and is, in the analyst’s professional assessment, “aspirational.”
McDonald’s corporate social media responded to the viral moment with a post captioned “Take a bite of our new product,” with a photo of the Big Arch, which is either a masterclass in self-aware brand recovery or an algorithm making decisions that nobody at headquarters fully sanctioned. The post received substantial engagement. The engagement was largely mockery. McDonald’s liked several of the mocking comments, which is a communications strategy that Supposedly News describes as “bold” and declines to further evaluate.
The ‘Product’ Problem
Among the video’s many quotable moments, the one that lodged itself most deeply into the public consciousness was Kempczinski’s repeated use of the word “product” to describe the burger — a word that is technically accurate, legally appropriate, and somehow the most unsettling thing a person has said about food in recent memory.
Restaurants do not call food “product” in front of customers. Supply chains call food “product.” Procurement departments call food “product.” The part of the process that happens before the food exists as food calls it “product.” The part of the process that faces the customer — the menu, the server, the promotion, the CEO on Instagram in a sweater vest — is generally understood to use a different vocabulary.
“It scares me when you call food ‘product,'” wrote one commenter, expressing an anxiety that received a significant amount of agreement from people who had not previously been able to articulate why.
“He acts like he’s never seen a burger before. Impressed by sesame seeds,” wrote another.
A third user, displaying the research instincts of a seasoned journalist, observed that Kempczinski’s “aura screams kale salad,” which is not a verifiable claim but which Brent Eyewitness, having watched the video several times for professional purposes, declines to fully dispute.
What McDonald’s Says Now
McDonald’s has not issued a formal statement addressing the video or its reception. Kempczinski has not commented publicly. The company has, however, noted that the CEO regularly eats McDonald’s food three to four times per week, has been posting burger content on Instagram since 2019, and generally takes considerably larger bites when he is not being filmed for promotional content, a detail that raises its own questions about which is the performance and which is the baseline.
The Big Arch burger launched on schedule. It has 1,020 calories. It has two quarter-pound beef patties, white cheddar, crispy onions, pickles, lettuce, and a sauce described by the company as “tangy” and “creamy.” It is, by all accounts from actual food journalists who ate the whole thing, a real hamburger that a real person can eat.
Chris Kempczinski has said he loves this product.
He has also said he was going to finish it for lunch.
The rest of the lunch remains, as of press time, unconfirmed.
Supposedly News will continue to monitor this situation. We have submitted a follow-up inquiry. We expect a similar outcome. We will report back when there is product to report.
Brent Eyewitness is Supposedly News’s Field Reporter and the publication’s primary food-adjacent correspondent. He watched the video seven times for this piece. He took larger bites than Kempczinski throughout. He would like this noted in the record.