8 Fast Food Fan Creations That Made It To The Official Menu

You may be surprised to know that a lot goes into creating a fast food menu. There are test kitchens, focus groups, rollout schedules, and a whole system making sure every single item is exactly as you like it. But occasionally, the tables turn. A customer figures out a better way to hack a fast food favorite. A video goes viral. And a chain gets so many requests, it has no choice but to take notice. 

The items on this list all started outside the official menu and, due to sheer demand, ended up with a spot on it. What's amazing is how different the paths for these items were. Some took formal fan submissions and others required persistence, but nevertheless, they were so popular that the chains decided to cash in on it. Some of these items traveled from Reddit to TikTok to a press release in under a year. Others took decades to earn a spot on the official menu, despite their popularity being through the roof. The common thread, though, isn't any platform or social media; it's the customers who made these custom creations worth publicizing. 

A note before we dive in: A couple of these come from fast-casual chains rather than traditional fast food, but the stories were too good to leave out.

Five Guys doesn't have a complicated menu, claiming to have one of the most hackable menus in the country, with over 250,000 topping combinations to build upon. We've even tried every Five Guys 'popular picks' burger combinations to see which ones are best. And with that in mind, the patty melt hack was embarrassingly obvious when it came out of the secret menu. The original "secret" hack was to order a grilled cheese with the addition of a burger patty and toppings of your choice. Customers had been quietly doing this for years until it started taking mainstream social media by storm, with users posting their takes on the popular creation. 

By then, Five Guys was in on the "secret," too, embracing the hack publicly. The chain decided to add the Patty Melt to the official menu in September 2024, and didn't try to add its own spin to it. The company's official announcement literally said, it hopes the customers now feel like a part of the Five Guys family. What makes the Five Guys Patty Melt so delicious is one specific construction detail. It has the regular slices of American cheese, melted onto an upside-down burger bun, which then nestles a juicy beef patty, sometimes a double, and toppings of your choice. That's exactly how the customers had been building it themselves all along. 

It's a well-known fact that Starbucks' Pink Drink first went viral through social media, all thanks to Instagram. In 2016, when customers discovered that swapping water for coconut milk in the Strawberry Açaí Refresher created a pastel pink, photogenic, and genuinely delicious drink, they took to Instagram to talk about it. So much so that the hashtag #PinkDrink gathered tens of thousands of posts before Starbucks even entered the picture to officially acknowledge the hack. It went ahead and launched an official version in 2017, aptly naming it the "Pink Drink."

The drink went viral the way most secret menu hacks do — through word of mouth and customers eagerly adding their own spin to it. What made it even more appealing was how simple it was. The coconut milk dissolved into a creamy blush pink color to create a gorgeous, Instagram-worthy drink that stood out from the regular brown coffee. 

The company brought the drink to select stores in 2017, later adding it to the permanent menu nationwide, and it's been there ever since. It's one of the classic examples of the power of having a strong customer base because there's a clear before and after: The drink existed as a secret menu fan hack, it went viral entirely without Starbucks' involvement, and then the corporation looked at the stats and decided to bring it to the menu. There was no contest, no submission form; just people wanting more of it, and the company acquiescing. In 2023, Starbucks began bottling the Pink Drink for retail sale in grocery stores, cementing its status as one of its most successful products. 

While the dirty soda trend originally came from Utah, it found a national audience when "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" cast member Taylor Frankie Paul posted a TikTok of it. The concept of a dirty soda is simple and highly customizable, consisting of fountain drinks mixed with flavored syrups, sweet creamers, and other mix-ins of choice.

In the video that Paul posted in October 2024, she showed her followers her go-to Taco Bell hack: a Baja Blast with vanilla sweet creamer mixed in. This simple yet specific hack was so easy to recreate that it had the entire internet trying it out. Yelp recorded a whopping 600% increase in dirty soda searches as compared to before "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" premiered. 

Taco Bell joined in on it, releasing the Dirty MTN Dew Baja Blast Soda (or Baja Blast with sweet vanilla cream added) as an official menu item, riffing off of Paul's hack. It went ahead and released the hack both as a drink and in frozen form — imagine the Baja Blast but with a creamy twist. Paul even took home the "Menu Hack of the Year" award at the Bell Awards 2025 for creating the "masterpiece". It's still one of the most talked-about Taco Bell hacks, sitting tall in the company's "Dirty Sips" platform in the permanent nationwide menu. 

Most chains are aware of secret fan menus, but Burger King took it a step ahead and built an actual program around it. Launched in July 2025, "Whopper By You" invites customers to submit ideas for their unique Whopper builds using existing ingredients, with the fan-favorite ones securing a spot on the national menus for a limited time. The line-up has been incredible so far, featuring: the BBQ Brisket Whopper, the Crispy Onion Whopper in 2025, and the Ultimate Steakhouse Whopper in January 2026. When the last one came out, the program had received over 600,000 submissions.

Then, in March 2026, came the Peppercorn BLT Whopper, the latest fan-created item in the series. This one features a quarter-pound flame-grilled patty, peppercorn mayo, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cheese on a toasted sesame seed bun. According to Josh Kobza, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, Burger King's parent company, the purpose of this program was to broaden the chain's reach. The corporation's U.S. president, Tom Curtis, added that Burger King wanted to elevate the iconic Whopper using direct customer feedback, and the feedback has been incredible. 

Burger King still encourages submissions through the program. So the current item can be cycled out anytime soon for the next iconic customer creation, keeping fans craving for more. But you don't necessarily have to wait for the next creation; you can also get the best possible version of the Whopper with these five ordering tips.

In her book "The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger," the owner and president of the corporation, Lynsi Snyder, explains the origin story behind Animal Style. In-N-Out restaurants at the time had built-in floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the customers to watch their food being made. This was a deliberate choice by co-founder Harry Snyder, who wanted the customers to see their food being "made with care". 

In 1961, one of the customers saw a manager make himself a custom burger using a patty seared in mustard, extra pickles, grilled onions, and extra spread, and asked for one himself. This rowdy regular, who was one of the so-called "animals" who made up In-N-Out's early customer base, loved the creation, deeming it the best burger of his life. He loved it so much, it became a regular part of his order, though he didn't know what to call it. Eventually, the manager suggested calling it "Animal Style", so that the staff wouldn't have to hear the full instructions every single time an order came in, according to Snyder's book. And that's how Animal Style was born. To date, it is considered the most popular In-N-Out special menu item hands down.

The nickname fit the culture of the place, especially the aforementioned "animals," a mass of loud, music-blaring, horn-honking, fight-starting regulars. The order spread across the country as a secret menu hack for decades, purely through word of mouth, until In-N-Out eventually accepted it with open arms and added it to its official "Not-So-Secret Menu" page online. Now, the famous Animal Style burger or fries are one of the must-have items on the menu.

For years, Starbucks has had a not-so-secret secret menu that the fans seem to adore. The company neither endorsed it nor shut it down, letting the phenomenon grow on its own accord, living entirely through barista knowledge, social media tutorials, blogs, or Instagram posts. 

The history of the Starbucks secret menu is one for the books. The loyalty program keeps growing every year, and its "no-so-secret menu" Instagram broadcast channel is one of the corporation's most engaged online properties. But the status of the not-so-secret menu changed in July 2025 when Starbucks decided to release an official Secret Menu on its mobile app, accessible only to the U.S. Rewards members. Four fan-inspired drinks made the lineup: Cookies on Top, Dragonfruit Glow-Up, Lemon, Tea & Pearls, and Just Add White Mocha. And to add to the craze, Starbucks also launched a contest in August 2025, where customers and baristas could submit their unique drink hacks, with the grand prize for the best drink being $25,000 and the three runners-up winning $5,000 each. 

The not-so-official secret menu still rotates with new fan drinks taking the podium regularly. Customers can still hope to see their creation make the final cut, making this one of the most successful and embraced audience engagement programs by a popular chain. 

In December 2022, food creator Alexis Frost posted a video of a Chipotle steak quesadilla with the addition of fajita vegetables, as part of her "Eating What Employees Would Order" social media series. She learned of this particular modification through a Chipotle staff member and rated it 10 out of 10 on her social media, adding how the hack resembled a Philly cheesesteak in taste. 

The video grossed over 150,000 likes and caught the attention of another social media food reviewer, Keith Lee. Lee stitched Frost's video, claiming that Chipotle is incomplete without a vinaigrette, showcasing one of the hacks for ordering Chipotle everyone should know; this DIY dipping sauce was made with Chipotle honey Vinaigrette and sour cream. The combination blew up, generating over 30.6 million views, and Chipotle hopped on fairly quickly, adding the viral hack to its permanent digital-only menu on the app and the website.

Chipotle then launched two limited-time versions of the hack, named the "Keithadilla" and the "Fajita Quesadilla Hack", as a hat-tip to the creators. The latter comes with side options of roasted chili corn salsa, tomatillo-red chili salsa, or sour cream. Chipotle's CMO Chris Brandt appreciated TikTok for transforming the way the corporation communicates with its young audience, and also helping it identify areas of opportunity within the business.

In July 2025, Taco Bell released the Fan Style program on the app, allowing Rewards Members to build, name, and share their unique order customizations. The most ordered creations were rewarded with points on the app, and the most popular item, after being carefully selected by the corporation, became eligible for a spot on the official menu. Taco Bell described the initiative as "an ode to the customizers, swappers, and dreamers who've added their own touch to the menu."

The program, after gaining 40,000 submissions, finally picked the winning three. One of them was the California Crunchwrap created by Brock Horton from Holton, Michigan. After seeing loyalists add fries to their burritos, Horton decided to try the same, but with a Crunchwrap instead — his version adds grilled steak and guacamole to the seasoned french fries. The team at Tasting Table even tried it and thinks it's a heavy hitter. 

Hortong, along with the other two Fan Style winners, Sandra from Missouri and Kajol from Kentucky, who created the Cantina Craze and Burrito Bliss, respectively, were invited to Taco Bell's headquarters in Irvine, California, and given the honorary title of "Fan Chefs." And while the California Crunchwrap was released in November 2025 for a limited time only, the Fan Style feature still remains active on the app at the time of writing, with fan submissions continuing to pour in.