Content creator Stanley Chen and his stall at the Good Food and Wine Show in Brisbane last year. Photo / YouTube
A content creator has secretly served McDonald’s burgers to oblivious attendees at a major Australian food convention to prove a point.
Stanley Chen, who has almost 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, set up a stall at the Good Food and Wine Show, which is held annually in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
After securing a small stand for the event in the Queensland capital last year, he stuck banners on to the walls of his booth to advertise “Mark Donholds”.
The brazen advertising featured three photos of different burgers, which he said were “stolen” from the fast-food giant, and a red and yellow logo.
On the menu were “Quarter Mark”, “Biggest Mark” and “Mark’s Chicken”, all named close to burgers by the world’s second largest franchise.
Chen labelled it an “organic farm to table healthy alternative” to fast food.
Tens of thousands of experts in the industry, food enthusiasts, home cooks and foodies filed into the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre where hundreds of stalls were and began trying the best products on offer across Australia.
Many stumbled into Chen’s stand, with the content creator telling unsuspecting customers the beef patties in the burgers were sourced from Iceland.
The big selling point was that the filling was sandwiched by a collagen-infused bun, with the beef coming from grass-fed cows and the burger free of genetically modified organisms.
“We’re trying to find a healthier alternative to fast food,” Chen told attendees.
“We import our meat... and it’s expensive so we’re trying to do some market research. We rate things in terms of claps.
“So if we say a burger is good, it’s clapped.”
Some customers at first questioned the taste, but when the content creator and his friends insisted it was a healthier option, many were on board.
“It’s quite nice. The bun it’s nice light and fluffy. I’ll give you 4.5,” a man who identified himself as a chef said.
“Tastes like a healthier version of a fast-food burger,” another man said.
One of Chen’s sidekicks then asked: “How does it compare to McDonald’s?”
“This tastes like McDonald’s,” a woman responded.
“Tastes like a Big Mac,” a man said.
But when asked if it was better or worse than the fast-food giant, the man said “healthier”.
A former McDonald’s employee at the event rated it five “claps” out of five.
“Well yeah, I used to work in McDonald’s and we would make thousands of them,” he said.
“So you can tell the difference?” one of the pranksters probed.
“Yeah,” the man responded.
“The buns look really good. So you just got to keep that consistency.”
Another woman described Mark Donholds as “juicy, tasty, mouth-watering”.
The content creators ordered more McDonald’s from UberEats after they ran out.
“Our kitchen is cooking more burgers,” Chen and his mates joked to viewers.
They later brazenly went out of the venue to collect the delivery before it was brought back to their stand and stashed underneath their table.
More burgers cut into bite-sized pieces were handed out before they asked foodies the “big question”: how much would they be willing to pay for it?
“Well, you see I hate a dry burger and this is moist… around the A$18 ($20) mark,” one man said.
Another said he would cough up A$20 for it, while a woman responded with A$25.
But what was the point of the video?
Chen said it was to show that a higher price did not always equal to a higher quality, pointing to the “ridiculous” cost of some fast-food giants.
“So, after two days of running Mark Donholds we had not only convinced normal food critics but even an ex-McDonald’s recipe developer that we’re better than the big M,” he said.
News.com.au has reached out to the YouTube star and McDonald’s for comment.
According to a study, the method is called the “health halo” effect.
It is a move commonly used to advertise a specific product as healthier than it may be.
A few simple words such as “new formula”, “tastier” and “new and improved” give whatever they are trying to sell a positive spin to an existing or new item.
It often leads to consumers wanting to buy the product more.
One example is cereals, with mums and dads trying to find healthier alternatives for their kids because of the high sugar content in many brands on supermarket shelves.
“While there’s a demand for healthier foods, how this is marketed and perceived through labelling is key,” Department of Agriculture Economics, assistant professor Shuoli Zhao, from the University of Kentucky in the United States, said.
“Children’s cereals often highlight the addition of more vitamins. For some consumers, this creates a ‘health halo’ effect that appeals to time-strapped parents, even if the product’s core nutritional content – like sugar or sodium – is not optimal.”
Zhao, who led the research, added the food environment kids are exposed to and the limited time parents have to shop in today’s world can lead to poorer food choices.
He hopes the food industry can offer more healthier options for the future generation.