Large Food for Large People

Good Eat'n

I am a grown man, and for this reason alone I should be eating much larger food.

Hardee’s seems to be the only fast food chain that understands this, which is why they’ve recently introduced their new Thickburgers, which I believe is an entire Angus cow between two buns.

The Thickburger is becoming more and more popular as average people, most of them young men in their twenties and thirties, have used the television medium to denounce small burgers and tout the meaty reverence of the Thickburger. They will not stand by in silence while other corporate chains force them to eat small slabs of meat. A Happy Meal only contains eleventy-billion calories, and regardless of the fact that McDonald’s had to make up the number “eleventy-billion” in order to calculate them, I still want more. I am a growing adult and my food should be growing with me. By the time I reach sixty I should be flying a one-man craft to a large orbiting meat dirigible twice the size of our planet.

“I want a big, juicy burger,” pleaded one man during his thirty-second meat confession. And who doesn’t want a big juicy burger? It’s not like there’s a meat shortage going on, so why can’t Burger King and McDonald’s wise up and start giving us larger quantities of meat? Trust me, I live in the Midwest and there are cows everywhere, almost too many.

Another man reminisced about a hamburger he ate at a truck stop many years ago. I myself keep a written log of every hamburger I’ve ever eaten and often recall them at social gatherings when the conversation begins to lag, so his soliloquy was especially interesting to me. It was his belief that if Hardee’s even came close to matching that particular truck stop burger, he would definitely purchase one. He spoke of that truck stop burger as if it were some beautiful summer fling, some whirlwind romance that flashed across the sky for a brief moment and burned itself into his mind forever. As they say, if you can’t be with the one you love, than love the one you’re with. It’s this kind of humble self-awareness that makes me want to call founder Bob Hardee* and thank him for giving me large meat, thus reducing the need to spend money on a psychologist who will sit and listen while I complain about the crippling emotional problems I’ve had to suffer my entire life due to my sandwiches being too miniscule.

Fast food burgers have become so small that one young man was forced to purchase three or four burgers and stack them on top of one another. “It’s the only way I can get enough meat,” he claims. The only other option would be to cut open your stomach, mount a meat grinder on your chest, and simply turn the crank until you’ve gotten your fill. It’s also fathomable to unhinge your jaw and run through an open prairie gobbling up cattle one by one like some morbid country-fried Pac-Man.

In the realm of Lord McDonald, Hardee’s is fighting to stay relevant.

We’ve seen the Frisco Burger, Boss Burger, Monster Burger, and Six Dollar Burger, but they all failed miserably, despite all being the exact same sandwich. What Hardee’s failed to realize is that the most successful fast food chains have found the right angle, not the right food. Burger King has their flame-broiling and financial backing of the meat aristocracy, Wendy’s stays open late in order to corner the crank addict market, and McDonald’s has small bands of operatives in every country who can make even the most horrific homicide look like an accident.

This new Thickburger is a step in the right direction, but it may not be the gimmick Hardee’s needs, and time is running out. At this juncture, slapping cartoons on plastic cups, curling fries, and having your business run by an adopted dead guy are all considered old hat. Hardee’s needs to think big, like this great hamburger I had one balmy summer evening at the county fair. It was a large burger, about the size of a slightly overweight infant, and as I bit into that burger, I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if Hardee’s could recreate a slightly overweight infant. If it even came close to the ones I saw on Maury Povich, I would pay top dollar.

*May not be actual name

- Adam Finley