Name: McDonald’s CEO Breaks Silence After Big Arch Backlash
Uploaded: 2026-04-06T15:14:00Z
Duration: 11 min 8 s
Description: After going viral with his Big Arch bite, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski sits down for an exclusive interview with WSJ to discuss menu strategy, affordability concerns, and what his company reveals about today’s cautious consumer.

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After going viral with his Big Arch bite, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski sits down for an exclusive interview with WSJ to discuss menu strategy, affordability concerns, and what his company reveals about today’s cautious consumer. Photo: May James/Reuters; Vince Brown

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260403/4df09768-8a54-4dee-ada3-96daa9bb6e21/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

After going viral with his Big Arch bite, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski sits down for an exclusive interview with WSJ to discuss menu strategy, affordability concerns, and what his company reveals about today’s cautious consumer.

McDonald’s CEO Breaks Silence After Big Arch Backlash 

Welcome to our test kitchen. Looks like we've got fries, our iconic fries and some chicken nuggets here.

So what makes these the gold standard?

Oh, there's a lot that goes into it.

You know, you want to pick up the fry and you look at the length, you want to see sort of a nice even color across everything. You're also then looking at the texture and then, of course, it's gotta taste like a McDonald's fry, so.

You got any advice for somebody to how to eat on camera?

Well, I'd say the biggest thing is just dive right in. So I'm looking forward to taking a nice bite at this chicken nugget.

It's a little weird to watch each other eat.

Yeah, well, imagine how I felt.

Tim: McDonald, CEO Chris Kempczinski is talking about this now viral video.

You've heard about it. Here it is, the Big Arch.

Tim: Specifically, this moment.

All right, the moment of truth.

Tim: When he tried the company's newest burger.

That is so good. That's a big bite for a Big Arch.

Tim: And became a social media sensation.

That man don't acted like he had never eaten a hamburger before from McDonalds.

Speaker: Take a bite like you like it.

Tim: At a time when the chain is trying to win back value conscious customers, I wanted to learn what this viral snafu means to the company. I joined McDonald's CEO at its Chicago headquarters for an exclusive interview, the first he's done since going viral.

How did you realize that you went viral?

I got a call from one of my kids and they said, "Dad, you've gone viral and not in a good way." And so that's when I knew like, okay, something's going on. And then, yeah, I started getting texts and emails and calls. You know, invariably they were all like, "Hey, have you seen this?" And it's like, by the thousandth time, "Yah, I've seen it."

What do you think of the reaction?

For me, it was one of those things where it's great that people are talking about the Big Arch and I think when you go onto social media in general, you have to have a thick skin.

So what do you think of some of the criticisms?

As you can see, I took a huge bite because this is so good.

Mouth is half closed, microscopic bite size. Fighting demons to hold it in. Contemplating career path.

You know, I think of some of the videos say you took a small bite, maybe you don't even like your own burgers.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: You know, are you secretly a vegetarian?

Yeah.

`Chris] Well.

You wanna clear that up?

Yeah, I'm definitely not a vegetarian. I think, you know, I blame it all on my mom because she told me don't talk with your mouth full. And I think probably in that case I should have just said, you know what? To hell with it. I'm gonna go talk with my mouth full.

There's some out there who would say CEOs maybe should stay off social media.

Yeah.

Tim: There's a lot of risk.

Yeah.

Clearly you're leaning in.

Chris: Yeah.

To the medium, why?

I think because there's so much interest in McDonald's and you know, CEOs, for better or for worse, in many cases, they're the face of the brand. So I do think it's important to be out there, particularly in a consumer facing brand to do it. Now there's ways that you need to be thinking about engaging and there's places that I think it's appropriate for a CEO to be out there and doing it. But for me, McDonald's is a fun brand.

What do you think this tempest, if you will, says about the moment we are in communicating with your customers, the importance of social media influencers?

Yeah, we're in a world now where this creator economy and how consumers are engaging with brands, it's a lot more dynamic. And this notion of you can control everything. That's not the world that we're in. Consumers, I think, there's a cynicism and a skepticism goes around advertising and I think what's been so refreshing around this creator economy and how people are using social media now is, you know, it's got a greater degree of authenticity where the consumers, or our guests, are actually just as much in control of our brand as we are. And that's a change if you're a marketer

That makes some people very nervous, right?

Yeah.

I mean one of the things you've been trying to compound in the last few years is the perception that McDonald's is no longer affordable. The perception that maybe the food isn't as good as it once was. And I know you've been working on those two things in particular.

Yeah.

What are you doing this year to hit those issues?

If you look at what's happened in the last, you know, call it 18 months or so with the McValue program in the US we had a $5 meal. More recently we've just announced that we're gonna be coming out with 10 items under $3. So there's a lot of things that, you know, we're gonna be able to be doing in that space that I think are gonna continue to drive a value message. One of the things I've talked about is McDonald's in our DNA is value. I think through COVID and some of the inflation, we and others in the industry maybe got a little bit off sides on that and I've talked about that. But I think we've come back in a pretty resounding way and there's actually quite a bit of care and attention that goes into where we source our food, how we prepare our food. And ultimately, I think when someone goes into the restaurant, the moment of truth is when they bite into the burger, the moment of truth is when they, you know, take a bite out of our fries or have a McFlurry. And with 70 million people a day coming into a McDonald's, the feedback that we get is people love our food.

I don't have to tell you this, but you're in a brutally competitive business, right? I think that was underscored by the moment your video had going viral and your competitors trying to take a opportunity to take pokes at you, right?

Moment of truth.

That's a burger. [Tim] How do you rise to that moment?

I always love when my competitors are talking about me.

What does it mean to you when you hear them talking about you?

Well, it means that people are hearing about Big Arch and then they're going out and buying Big Arch. So have at it. But I think you're right. I mean, we're in a competitive industry. We really are. I think the leader in our industry, you know, we don't spend as much time, to be honest, thinking about what our competitors are doing, and you know, what's gonna be our response. We're much more focused on kind of playing our own game.

Tim: New products like the Big Arch are developed, tested, and refined at kitchens in the company's headquarters. How do you ensure that gold standard when you're rolling out new products around the world?

Part of it is we have training that starts with this. So we make sure that all of our restaurants are trained in the exact way that we want that product prepared. We have a gold standard execution guide that everybody gets trained on and then we'll also come out and we're launching the product. We're actually spot checking and seeing, are we actually executing it as we design the product? And then, of course, we get feedback from customers literally every single day of how we're doing. So all of those things come together.

McDonald's is known for its hamburgers, it's known for its chicken nuggets. You have ambitions for more chicken. How do you compete against companies that are only doing chicken?

So we have a dedicated team that focuses only on chicken and it's everything from where we're sourcing the chicken, the size of the chicken, how we prepare the chicken, the recipe, the equipment that we use, all those things. I think what you're talking to though is our challenge is a little bit different because unlike some of our competitors that are maybe just specialists who only do chicken or only do coffee, we have a much broader menu. And so then you're trying to figure out how do I serve a broad menu in a kitchen space like this and do it in a way where the product tastes great, it's fast, it's accurate, it's done at the right value and that's the magic of McDonald's. We figure out how to do it.

And you figure out a way to come out faster, right? The Big Arch came out how soon?

It was done in under a year. And I think for us, part of what we're seeing here is we've gotta move faster in the world today. Consumer tastes and preferences and what sort of hot at the moment, you know, you've gotta be able to strike while the iron's hot.

What was the goal with the Big Arch?

Chris: Yeah.

What were you trying to address in your menu with this new product?

Well, I think the big thing we saw there is, you know, there's a group of consumers out there who want a really big burger. That's a half a pound of beef in the Big Arch. There's a desire to have sort of an elevated burger experience. And I think what we've done with the Big Arch, the bun, the sauces that we have with it, the crispy onions, all those things, that was for us a way to offer that more elevated burger experience.

On one hand you've got this premium burger, it's a lot to it. And on the other hand you're pushing into even more on the deal. value meal 2.0, what's going on there? Why do you need both?

When you have roughly 90% of the population that's coming into a McDonald's at least once a year, you've gotta serve everybody, young, old, rich, poor. I mean, no matter what, you know, walk of life people are coming from, or what occasion, sometimes it's a meal, sometimes it's a snack, you've gotta have a broad reach of of items on the menu to appeal to that group of people. And so that's what you're seeing with having something like the Big Arch, which is on the premium side of the menu. And then also having a lot of great affordable options on the lower end.

McDonald's is a great barometer of the economy. Is there, what are you seeing in the past year that's different with your customers when it comes to spending?

I think it's probably been largely consistent with what we've seen over the last couple years, which is certainly that lower income consumers under a lot of pressure, yeah.

Are they under more pressure now?

I think in this particular moment there's probably, we know a fair bit of unease around, you know, what's gonna happen in 2026 as maybe some of these energy costs and the inflation that's coming with energy. How does that work its way through the economy? Does that actually add another layer of inflation? So I'd say right now in this particular moment, the lower income consumers continuing to feel stressed and continuing to be very careful about how they're spending their dollar.

And now you're working on improving or redefining what the value of that experience is like in the restaurants and on the menu this year?

Yeah, well we've stood up this team that, we call it a restaurant experience team. And one of the things that, you know, we wanted to take a look at is, if you think about all the things that go on with the restaurant experience, one of the things that's interesting is actually 60% of people's taste perceptions are formed before they even take a bite of our product. That comes from where's the product sourced from? Or when they walk into the restaurant, what's the aroma that they get? Seeing how the product's prepared. All of those things go into shaping how a customer thinks about a product. It primes them in a way for what that great moment of truth, bite is gonna be. And so for us, with our restaurant experience team, we wanted to bring all those things together.

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