Valuetainment - March 05, 2026


“The Burger WARS” - McDonald's CEO ROASTED Over Big Arch Burger Hype Video


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

199.88713

Word count

1,653

Sentence count

167

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A massive story broke today about the CEO of McDonald s and the new burger they re launching. It s called the "Big Arch" and it s a massive opportunity for the company. But is it a good one or a bad one?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.320 A massive story broke, guys. You have to see this. This is massive. This is heartbreaking.
00:00:05.080 Some people are saying this is bigger than the Iran story. It's not getting enough credit, but
00:00:08.520 low-key, a lot of people are paying attention to this, of what the CEO of McDonald's just did.
00:00:13.560 The CEO of McDonald's tried to do a publicity stunt to introduce the new burger that they're
00:00:19.760 launching, which is called, what, the Big Arch? Rob, is it already out or not yet?
00:00:24.440 I'm not sure if it's out. I'll check.
00:00:26.120 Jake, is it out? Do you know if it's out or no?
00:00:27.760 I think this is the PR tour we're supposed to be part of looking at right now.
00:00:31.460 It came out today.
00:00:33.020 Beautiful. Let's cancel the podcast. Let's go, guys.
00:00:36.240 So here's him eating the McDonald's, a new Big Arch burger, and then obviously right afterwards,
00:00:43.580 Burger King's like, this is a massive opportunity for us. 0.99
00:00:46.900 Rob, maybe don't go from the beginning because people will, it's a cure for insomnia, but if
00:00:51.440 you can play it from, go for it from right there. That's fine.
00:00:54.760 At two quarter pound patties, a delicious Big Arch sauce, and of course some lettuce. So,
00:01:02.240 oh, there's so much going on with this. First of all, let's try to get this thing. I don't
00:01:07.580 even know how to attack it. Got so much to it. Oh, there's also some crispy onions on here
00:01:12.920 as well. I see those kind of coming out.
00:01:14.460 He looks like a vegetarian.
00:01:15.320 All right. The moment of truth.
00:01:19.940 Come on, buddy. Take the bite.
00:01:21.700 That is so good.
00:01:22.760 That's a big bite for a Big Arch. It's distinctively McDonald's. Only McDonald's could do this type
00:01:29.240 of burger, but it also is unlike anything else on our menu. It's a delicious product.
00:01:33.600 Sounds like a nice guy. Do me a favor. Go to the Burger King CEO and watch what he does
00:01:39.280 here. He doesn't even say anything. He just puts on a kitchen. What do you call it?
00:01:43.800 A chef's apron and then takes a bite out of it. And go ahead, Rob.
00:01:50.300 That's a bite.
00:01:53.080 Not bad, right?
00:01:54.860 Only one thing missing. A napkin.
00:01:59.500 Yeah.
00:02:00.740 So, what do you do? When you look at this, what do you say? Do you say, Mr. CEO, respectfully,
00:02:05.440 you're not a personality guy?
00:02:06.640 Yes. Yes. Somebody in marketing should have said, you're not the guy to be out in front
00:02:10.400 of this. You're kind of robotic. You don't look like a human in some cases.
00:02:13.800 You look like a vegetarian.
00:02:14.800 You look like a vegetarian.
00:02:15.920 The Burger King guy looked like he should be eating Burger King.
00:02:18.760 Yeah.
00:02:18.860 Now's guy does not look like a McDonald's.
00:02:20.520 If I put my marketing hat on for a second, it looks like what he was trying to do is show
00:02:24.700 how big it was. And he's like, oh, look at this. Two patties. It's got it. And it's
00:02:28.320 like, it's so big. Let's see. And what do you say? Let me see if I can get my mouth around
00:02:31.940 this.
00:02:32.000 But isn't that even overthinking it?
00:02:33.560 It is. And so he's robotic and they coached him. And so then he's trying to make it look big
00:02:38.140 by taking a small bite is probably what they told him something. It was a marketing thing.
00:02:41.960 It was, it was bad. It was horrible.
00:02:44.120 Well, the burger wars have been going on for a while. By the way, we have a value team
00:02:47.500 and has a case study that's going to drop this week on the burger wars. Coincidentally
00:02:50.840 enough, we shot it last week. And what's amazing. You think about it. McDonald's. If you took
00:02:55.420 the top 10 burger chains, Pat, what percent of the total revenue of all top 10 combined
00:03:01.760 is McDonald's?
00:03:02.580 How much? Which one?
00:03:04.300 55%.
00:03:04.940 Really?
00:03:05.500 Of all the top 10. They are, last year, they were $57 billion. They grew 6% last year when
00:03:11.420 most nobody else grew. And Wendy's has been rumbling, stumbling. Burger King is about to
00:03:16.380 leapfrog place $11 billion.
00:03:18.580 So it's $57 billion versus $11 billion. And the boutiques are doing great. In-N-Out's
00:03:25.240 doing great. Whataburger's doing great. Those are the boutiques. But what's really interesting
00:03:30.440 is McDonald's on a roll. Remember what happened. Just a couple of years ago, McDonald's was
00:03:35.960 kind of flat with growth. And he had this guy, Steve Easterbrook was their CEO. Do you
00:03:40.460 remember what happened to him? He was caught dipping the French fry with a member of his
00:03:44.240 staff? And he suddenly resigned and they had this big settlement. And because he lied to
00:03:50.380 the board, the board sued him. And for one of the first times in U.S. history, an exiting
00:03:55.400 CEO that had this big parachute package had to give the parachute back. $100 million.
00:04:01.220 So now the time is right.
00:04:02.760 What do you mean parachute?
00:04:04.460 They gave him a parachute package.
00:04:05.900 Because parachute is like a couple different meanings.
00:04:08.140 Well, when he was dismissed, they gave him $100 million to go away as part of his contract.
00:04:13.280 But then the board realized just how much the Steve Easterbrook guy apparently had
00:04:17.580 deceived the board and they actually sued to get it back. And that's rare. Usually
00:04:22.440 you have America sitting there slack-jawed saying, so a CEO gets fired and he gets $25 million
00:04:27.320 to retire?
00:04:28.460 Well, I don't know if this guy would talk dirty the right way so they don't have to worry
00:04:32.920 about that new CEO.
00:04:33.680 No, this guy, this guy.
00:04:34.860 Because he's going to say, wow, look how big this burger is.
00:04:38.520 Are you ready to go for it right now? You're about to get it.
00:04:45.180 I don't know if I see that happen. So the board is pretty fine with him. By the way,
00:04:48.700 I looked up his background. He's been the president and CEO since 19. He was the chairman of the board
00:04:53.880 since 2024. Duke University grad. Harvard, he got his MBA. He was at Procter & Gamble,
00:04:59.600 started in brand management, then went to Boston Consulting Group, BCG. So he's a consultant.
00:05:04.160 Then went to PepsiCo, corporate strategy and later VP of marketing. Then went to Kraft Foods,
00:05:09.660 EVP of growth initiatives, president of Kraft International. Then he joined McDonald's
00:05:14.840 as the EVP of strategy. Then he became president of McDonald's USA, running 14,000 restaurants.
00:05:20.080 Then he became the CEO. So he's a guy that's a corporate guy that's moved around a few different
00:05:24.440 places, but he's been at McDonald's for a few years.
00:05:26.400 Regarding the shareholder, you like this guy because it's the transition of Steve Mr.
00:05:30.740 Brook. He's done a great job. He's just not a guy for the commercial.
00:05:33.760 You're not going to see him at the nightclub. You're not going to see him at the party and
00:05:36.820 hardcore. I was going to say regarding McDonald's, I have a friend who owns about a dozen
00:05:42.380 McDonald's franchises. He's second generation. His father owned a bunch of franchises. He was able
00:05:46.580 to buy some of those from him. And he is he's about my age and he's trying to exit all of his
00:05:52.660 franchises as quickly as he can. He said that lots of people are doing that. He said that the DEI
00:05:58.080 policies have gotten so bad inside McDonald's that what's happened is they don't allow them
00:06:03.740 to now buy and sell McDonald's franchises freely. And so now they have to be sold to DEI candidates.
00:06:09.780 And so what that's done is it's lowered the value of his franchises now.
00:06:13.720 Wow. So now he's not able to sell them for the value that he would have before. And he said it's
00:06:17.660 just getting worse and worse. So he's trying to exit all of them. And he has kids like I'm like,
00:06:21.500 why wouldn't you get your kids like you got him? He's like, no, no, no. The value is going down
00:06:24.560 so fast. I'm exiting all of them right now. Unbelievable. I thought that was kind of interesting.
00:06:28.120 We had a call with the chief expansion officer of McDonald's probably about eight months ago.
00:06:32.340 It was a Zoom seven months ago about opening up in a McDonald's in Armenia. And by the time we
00:06:39.400 were done with the conversation, it wasn't something they were interested in at the time because of
00:06:43.180 risk, protection, military. They have a certain program, a structure they use on expanding into
00:06:48.580 different countries. And they said not right now, maybe later on. But fun fact, this guy doesn't
00:06:54.240 attend Coldplay concerts. I don't know if that matters anything or not. I just want to put that
00:06:58.960 out there. For those of you guys that are watching this and you're tuning in, I've got two more stories
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