Chris Kempczinski became the focus of widespread attention after a February clip showed him taking a notably small bite of McDonald’s new Big Arch, and that chris kempczinski burger reaction returned when he later sampled the chain’s nuggets on camera.
He told the Wall Street Journal that he blamed his mother’s etiquette guidance, saying, “I blame it all on my mom because she told me, ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’” and added that he should have said, “You know what? To hell with it. I’m gonna go talk with my mouth full.”
In the original burger clip he referred to the sandwich as “this product” and said, “I don’t even know how to attack it — there’s so much to it,” before taking a cautious nibble that viewers seized on.
Reactions And Company Context
Social media users mocked both the burger and nuggets clips, with some Instagram commenters calling the nugget bite “worse than the burger one,” and another writing, “He still looks like he does not want to eat his own ‘products.’”
On TikTok people questioned his discomfort, with comments such as, “Why does he make it look painful?” Critics included rival brands, as a Burger King account wrote, “we couldn’t finish it either,” Wendy’s commented, “lots to unpack here,” and Jack in the Box wrote, “From one CEO to another: eat your product.”
Burger King reposted a video of its own chief executive eating a Whopper and said it “thought we’d replay this,” while also telling NBC News the repost was not created in reaction to McDonald’s. Kempczinski said a child alerted him that he had “gone viral — and not in a good way.”
Kempczinski has taken the attention in stride, telling the Wall Street Journal that virality increased awareness of the Big Arch and observing, “This notion of you can control everything — that’s not the world that we’re in.” Business Insider reported McDonald’s stock was up about 3 percent over the previous year despite some lukewarm reception to the Big Arch. Kempczinski joined McDonald’s in 2015 and became chief executive in 2019.
