If there was anything the fast food world was defined by in 2025, it was celebrity collabs. In September, we were licking our fingers clean of KATSEYE’s sticky, sweet and spicy KBBQ sauce at Jollibee and pulling BTS TinyTan toys out of our McDonald’s Happy Meals. In July, we were housing Paige Buecker’s wings at Wingstop and washing it down with Sabrina Carpenter’s dreamy strawberry-flavored Dunkin’ refresher. We skated through June while crunching on Tony Hawk’s Taco Bell meal, and even kicked off 2025 with Angel Reese’s BBQ sauce at McDonald’s in January. Our mouths, and our wallets, hardly had time to recover between collabs.
While 2025 has hit a record number of collabs, the last five years — since 2020 — have seen the rise of these celebrity collaboration meal deals. Dunkin’ has been a consistent deliverer of these collabs, working with Sabrina Carpenter multiple times, as well as Ice Spice and Charlie D’Amelio. McDonald’s too has hopped on the collab train multiple times, partnering with Cardi B and Offset, Saweetie, and Travis Scott. Other restaurants, including Popeyes, Sonic, Crumbl, Burger King, and KFC, among others, have also joined the trend. The only question is, why?
It’s not like celebrity collaborations didn’t exist at all before 2020, seeing as Micheal Jordan made the McJordan with McDonald’s back in 1991, but they weren’t happening at nearly the same speedy rate that they are today. As the collaboration announcements clog up my news feed, I can’t help but wonder why exactly are these collabs gaining popularity. What’s caused the shift from almost none to a ton? The answer, according to experts, lies in current internet culture and the appeal of limited-time offers.
Social media creates an environment for celebrity collabs to thrive in.
There is no better place to promote products than on the internet and specifically, social media. The trendy nature of Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms allow fast food companies to create more casual, playful marketing that can, most importantly, reach new and large audiences. Celebrities have huge fan-bases that gather on social media, so these collabs allow fast food companies to harness the power of celebrity fame for their own benefit.
“Fast food companies have always tried to remain on the cutting edge of popular culture, and there is no more dominant force in popular culture right now than influencer culture and celebrity culture,” Adam Chandler, author of Drive-Thru Dreams, a book that explores the storied history of fast food in America, said in a phone call interview with Spoon University.
Plus, celebrities have a lot of influence, so if they make a meal with a fast food company and advertise to their fans, fans will go buy the meal because they want to support their favorite celebrities and engage in the trend of trying the meal.
“Collaborations with celebrities are great for social buzz and encouraging new trial from customers who maybe haven’t eaten at that fast food place recently,” Dr. Russell Zwanka, Director of Food Marketing at Western Michigan University, wrote in an email interview with Spoon University. “Everyone talks about them, and you’ve got to go try them.”
It’s hugely important for fast companies to stay on trend and remain in the spotlight, especially if they want to reach a younger audience. Collaborating with celebrities places fast food companies in the center of online culture, giving them the attention they’re seeking. Just being a well-known fast food company, like McDonald’s or Burger King, isn’t enough to sell product these days. They need to be engaging with social media culture. Hiring celebrities is a quick way to do that.
“Having influencers and celebrities is a shorthand that just makes it easier for these [fast food] companies to find their people and find new consumers and get them excited about whatever they’re selling that week,” said Chandler.
And if you’re wondering what these collabs earn celebrities, the answer lies somewhere between money and popularity. Celebrities make money by working with the fast food companies, yes, but they also nab headlines and increase their presence on the internet. The crossover event of fast food collabs benefit both the restaurants and the celebrities.
The limited-edition nature of the collabs gives them appeal.
Limited-time only offers, or LTO’s, are flashy by nature, designed to drive quick traffic. Adding a celebrity to a LTO deal just increases its visibility and appeal. You can have a generic coffee any day of the week, any week of the year, but if you want to try this celebrity edition of the coffee, you can only get it for a couple weeks. Celebrity collaboration marketing effectively includes the threat of feeling left out — you don’t want to be the fan that didn’t try your favorite celebrity’s meal.
“Collaborations are about aligning the audience of the celebrity with the excitement of something only at that certain restaurant. Customers love [LTO’s] and exclusive products. These collaborations are both,” said Dr. Zwanka. “No one wants to have a celebrity endorsed burger meal as a permanent fixture on the menu. There’s no excitement in that.”
Social media culture is fast and ever-changing, and these fast food companies, to stay relevant, have to do the same. Having a long-lasting celebrity meal deal would lose the sparkle that a LTO has. “Limited time” is a big flashing sign that celebrities can hold up and send people flocking to the fast food chain. After all, the LTO meals aren’t just being sold by the restaurant but also by the celebrity. In a way, it’s similar to a celebrity merch drop. The merch — in this case a fast food meal — won’t be around forever, so go try it now!
These celebrity collab meals aren’t generally brand-new inventions, either remixed versions of existing meals and ingredients or a small addition like a special sauce. Simply put, the food in the meals isn’t special. But the meals feel special because they have a celebrity attached to them. A celebrity reminding people that the meal won’t be around forever.
A celebrity face can distract from cost and quality.
If you roll through the drive through these days and gawk at the prices on the screens for a mere burger and fries, you’re not alone. Inflation has driven up the cost of fast food, defeating the “quick and cheap” marketing that fast food used to run on. If they can’t promote the value of the meals, then they need to have something else appealing to make it worth opening up the wallet. That’s where celebrity meals come in. Putting a celebrity in the name or on the packaging gives a collab meal a higher status, allowing fast food companies to charge more.
“I will confidently say that you’ll never see a celebrity promoting a meal that is not a premium meal somehow,” said Chandler. “That’s all part of what the engagement is about. It is about getting people to spend more. And perhaps overlooking the fact that fast food has gotten much more expensive since the pandemic.”
Fast food was never designed to be high quality, which explained the previous, relatively low pricing. Now, however, it feels like the price and the quality don’t match — that the price is too much for what people are actually getting. But when the prestige of a celebrity’s branding is added to the meal, that issue is covered up by the celebrity’s glow. This distraction in the form of celebrity collabs might not be a malicious tactic, but it is happening. And it’s working because of how the collaborations fit right into online pop culture.
Celebrity fast food collabs aren’t going away…for now.
If you’re hoping your favorite celebrity will collaborate with a fast food company, you might be in luck, as fast food and celebrity collabs will be sticking around for now. The fact that companies continue to put out these collabs means that this collaboration style of marketing is working, keeping fast food companies in the mainstream of culture and relevant among young people. So it’s pretty likely we will continue to see new celebrity collaboration meals into 2026.
“The formula seems to be working, and it seems to be something that these companies are wholesale adopting,” said Chandler. “We will continue to see collaborations as long as they are successful garnering attention, generating excitement, and creating profit and revenue for these companies.”
Trends, per their nature, come and go. Fast food celebrity collabs are in right now, and might be a longer running trend, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be around forever. Audiences could get tired of seeing celebrities put out things that are unrelated to their actual art and lose interest in these collabs. While the collabs are flashy and fun, they’re still about making the fast food chains money. When the collabs stop working, they’ll fade away into the history books of fast food trends like forgotten leftovers in the back of the fridge.