McDonald's and Burger King CEOs tasted their burgers; one emerged king

Hope you’re not feeling peckish while reading this, as the internet’s latest burger battle might just tempt you to place an order.

A new fast-food rivalry is unfolding online, with the CEOs themselves joining the fray. What began as a simple taste-test video has quickly turned into a playful social media face-off between McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and even Canada’s A&W Food Services of Canada.

It all began when Chris Kempczinski posted a video of himself trying McDonald’s newest menu item – the Big Arch burger.

“I love this product. It is so good,” he said in the video, which has garnered over 10 million views, referring to the burger as a "product".

In the caption, he added: “The Big Arch might be my new go-to lunch order. Who else is counting down the days until it’s in a store near you?”

After testing in markets such as the UK and Canada, the Big Arch officially launched in the United States on March 3.

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But the internet had other things to focus on. Viewers quickly found the video slightly awkward – especially the way Kempczinski kept calling the burger a "product".

And rival brands were watching. Burger King responded under the post: “@chrisk_mcd we couldn’t finish it either.”

Soon after, the company uploaded its own CEO taste-test video on TikTok featuring Tom Curtis. In the clip, Curtis takes a huge bite of a Whopper and jokes that the “only thing missing” is a napkin.

The caption read, "Thought we’d replay this.”

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The video racked up more than 2.8 million views in under 24 hours and spilt onto X, where users joked that the Burger King executive had “burgermogged” the McDonald’s CEO – internet slang for someone asserting clear superiority over another.

The chain recently announced the first major revamp of its iconic Whopper in nearly a decade, promising better buns, higher-quality mayonnaise, and sturdier box packaging instead of the traditional paper wrap.

Not one to miss a trending conversation, Wendy's also joined the fun.

The brand shared a video of its US president, Pete Suerken, taking a bite of the chain’s famous Baconator.

Posting on LinkedIn of all platforms, the company wrote, "Lots of chatter this week about burgers. Thought we’d remind everyone what fresh, never frozen tastes like.”

Meanwhile, North Vancouver-based A&W Food Services of Canada jumped in with its take, sharing a video of long-time commercial personality Allen Lulu sampling the brand’s Teen Burger.

“We love this product, which most people call a burger,” Lulu joked in the clip.

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Burger chains taking playful jabs at each other is nothing new.

Burger King has built a reputation for bold marketing – from its Whopper Detour campaign that encouraged customers to order a Whopper while standing near a McDonald’s outlet to the widely discussed Mouldy Whopper ad that showed a decaying burger to highlight the brand’s move away from artificial preservatives.

But if the latest taste-test trend proves anything, it’s that burger brands are more than happy to turn rivalry into entertainment.

And after watching these videos, one crucial question remains: what burger are you ordering next?