The McDonald's CEO was more authentic than you think

The McDonald's CEO is one of the most authentic executive voices on social media, and the internet missed it because a ten-second clip was easier to dunk on than a four-year body of work.

You have probably seen the video by now.

Chris Kempczinski, the CEO of McDonald's, posted an Instagram Reel in February taste-testing the new Big Arch burger. He took a small, hesitant bite. He called the burger "the product." He looked like a man who had been told to eat something by his communications team and was complying under protest.

The internet did what the internet does. Irish musician Garron Noone stitched the video on TikTok and delivered the kill shot: "This man does not eat McDonald's." Burger King's CEO posted a video taking an enormous bite of a Whopper. Wendy's piled on. A&W piled on. Adweek ran the headline "The McDonald's CEO Can't Seem to Stomach His Own Burger." The clip hit somewhere north of 10 million views.

And that was the whole story, apparently. CEO is out of touch. CEO does not eat his own product. CEO is cringe. Next.

I have not been to a McDonald's since I was 16 years old. That was 36 years ago. I do not eat fast food. I have zero stake in whether the Big Arch is any good.

But I went to Kempczinski's Instagram profile after seeing the mockery, because I was curious. What I found was not a stiff corporate executive performing authenticity for the camera. It was one of the more interesting executive content feeds I have seen from any industry.

What did nobody bother to look at?

Kempczinski has been posting iPhone-shot, intentionally unpolished videos from McDonald's Chicago headquarters for years. His Instagram following has grown tenfold since 2023. Most of his videos get 10,000 to 20,000 views. Not viral. Not trying to be. Just a CEO talking about his job with a level of candor that most executives in tech would never risk.

He has a series called "Quick Bites" where he tries McDonald's foods from around the world. He posted a video ranking sauces. He shared his 2025 predictions about protein, AI, and food trends, then came back in January 2026 to grade himself on how he did.

In one Reel, he called himself a "supersubscriber to every AI tool out there" and described using Google Gemini to research global food trends and compare them to the McDonald's menu. In another, he talked about using AI to photoshop all his kids into a single Christmas card because they live in different cities and could not get together for a photo.

He won a Shorty Award for authentic executive content. Not for one viral moment. For sustained, genuine communication over years.

The man was doing the work. The internet saw one bad bite and decided he was a fraud.

Why does the rage machine not reward nuance?

This is the part that bothers me.

The reaction to Kempczinski's video was not criticism. Criticism would have been "that video was awkward, here is how to do a taste test that does not look like a hostage situation." That would have been useful. That would have been fair.

What happened instead was a pile-on. Thousands of people competing to write the funniest dunk. Brands competing to write the cleverest troll. Media outlets competing for the most savage headline. Nobody clicked through to his profile. Nobody looked at the body of work. Nobody considered that one stiff video out of hundreds might not represent the whole person.

I wrote about how the way you communicate shapes your entire organization, and about what happens when communities turn toxic. The same dynamics apply here. When we reward the most reductive take, we get more reductive takes. When we reward nuance, we get nuance.

We are not rewarding nuance right now.

What can tech learn from a fast food CEO?

I work in tech. Most of the CEOs and executives I follow post the same things: product announcements, conference keynotes, the occasional humble-brag about company metrics. It is safe. It is boring. It tells me nothing about how they think.

Kempczinski gave us something different. He gave us a window into how a Fortune 500 CEO thinks about AI adoption, global food trends, team management, and the daily rhythm of running a company with 40,000 restaurants. That is genuinely interesting. That is the kind of content that builds trust with employees, investors, and customers over time.

I do not operate in the fast food industry. I know nothing about global supply chains for beef patties. But watching Kempczinski talk about his job taught me things I did not know about running a business at that scale. His perspective is different from mine, and that is exactly why it was valuable.

We learn the most from people who are nothing like us. We learn the least from people who confirm what we already believe.

What is the actual lesson here?

The lesson is not "do not post videos of yourself eating burgers." The lesson is that authenticity is a long game, and the internet evaluates on individual moments.

Kempczinski's Instagram is a body of work. Hundreds of posts. Years of showing up. A consistent, genuine effort to communicate openly about his job. One awkward video does not erase that.

Here is the irony: his Instagram following grew 30% after the controversy. Big Arch sales came in above expectations. The internet's mockery made more people discover his content, and a lot of those people liked what they found.

If you are a leader thinking about putting yourself out there, the Kempczinski story is actually encouraging. Not because going viral is the goal. But because the body of work matters more than any single moment. You have to show up and take credit for your work, even when showing up means occasionally looking awkward.

The people who mocked him will forget about it in a week. The people who followed him because of it will watch his next hundred videos.

I would take that trade every time.