Mysterious In-N-Out burger in Jamaica cooks up charitable giving
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Lincoln Boehm said he will donate the proceeds of his shirt sales to charity. Photo courtesy of Lincoln Boehm.
By Victoria Merlino
Things are only getting juicier for the man who says he found a flawless In-N-Out burger on a street in Jamaica — thousands of miles away from the nearest restaurant that makes them.
Lincoln Boehm, 31, the man who found mystery burger at 6:30 a.m. on Sutphin Boulevard last Saturday, is now selling shirts commemorating his beefy encounter, with all proceeds going toward the Food Bank for New York City.
“I just figured it’s rare to get this many eyes on something so I might as well try and leverage it for good,” Boehm told the Eagle. “And I thought using a double cheeseburger on the ground to raise money to help feed hungry people had a nice sort of symbolism to it.”
The shirts, which feature the words “Jamaica, Queens” stylized as the In-N-Out Burger logo, are selling for $25. Boehm said that the shirts are not affiliated with In-N-Out, and that he will take the shirts down if In-N-Out is not happy. “I am not profiting off of any of this, just trying to use a ridiculously absurd situation to raise money for a worthy cause,” Boehm wrote on his website.
Boehm’s burger saga began when he and his wife, Dara Katz, were waiting to catch a train at the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road station and saw the beautifully wrapped burger in the street on the way to eat at a McDonalds. “It genuinely shook me to my core,” Boehm had told the New York Post, who first reported on the sighting.
In-N-Out, for the uninitiated, is a chain of West Coast burger joints that has developed a cult following. Despite its immense popularity in the Pacific Time Zone, the chain hasn’t opened stores on the East Coast. The company says distance is limited by how long the patties can travel from the company’s patty-making facilities to stores while still keeping them fresh.
Restaurants currently operate in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregan, Texas and Utah.
Some have turned a skeptical eye toward Boehm’s burger find, pointing out that it is suspicious that he is a creative director at an advertising agency and calling it a potential PR stunt. Boehm insists, though, that he and his ad agency “absolutely, 100 percent nothing to do with" with the placement of the burger, according to an interview he conducted with PRWeek.
Denny Warnick, In-N-Out’s vice president of operations, also demurred about the misplaced Double-Double cheeseburger.
“So while it is a mystery as to how one of our burgers ended up in Queens, we’re sure someone is having a good laugh," Warnick said in a statement to PRWeek.
