McDonald’s this month introduced the Big Arch, the chain’s entrance into the world of extra-large burgers.
CEO Chris Kempczinski, who has built himself a relatively popular Instagram channel, where he gives career advice, provides travel tips, lists favorite sauces and, frequently, tries some menu items.
Early last month, he posted a video trying the Big Arch, declaring that he planned to eat it for his lunch. He talked about how big the burger was and how he was going to take that first bite.
The social media sphere apparently decided that this bite was not big enough and he was not genuine enough.
Among the comments: “He acts like he’s never seen a burger before” and “What’s the opposite of genuine and authentic?”
And so the CEO of McDonald’s over the weekend, on the eve of the national introduction of the biggest burger in the chain’s history, became a meme for being inauthentic on a social media post.
Ray Kroc used to drive around unannoced to McDonalds stores and ate few burgers a day (while counting burger wrappers in competitors trash to gauge their sales).
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) March 1, 2026
Current McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski looks like he gonna hurl after eating new Big Arch. pic.twitter.com/pmeSCjkhrM
Burger King, which just reconfigured the recipe for its Whopper, did not let this one go. The chain reposted a video of Tom Curtis, the brand’s president in the U.S. and Canada, taking a massive bite of the burger, complete with a bit of mayo on his face.
Not everybody was critical of Kempczinski, one of the rare CEOs of any company that will so willingly put himself out there on video.
Kempczinski is the driving force behind the burger’s creation. The Big Arch is being treated as a global burger, a bid to give the company a larger-sized sandwich for the base of fast-food customers who think a quarter pound of beef is too small.
And while social media was unforgiving, as it typically is, the result was a lot of impressions on the eve of the burger’s debut. That can’t be a bad thing right? We’ll see. But one way or the other, the competing burgers should make things more interesting this year.
People are talking about this video like it’s anything but positive for McDonald’s. The CEO is piling up millions of free impressions with the new product front and center the whole time pic.twitter.com/iqU6pLazKr
— Sam Ro 📈 (@SamRo) March 1, 2026
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