The burger world has always evolved with the times, but nothing has transformed it quite like social media. In 2025, a burger's success isn't just measured by how it tastes—it's also judged by how many views it racks up on TikTok or how photogenic it looks on Instagram. What was once a purely culinary experience has become a visual spectacle, a participatory challenge, and sometimes, a gloriously ridiculous experiment that makes you question everything you thought you knew about food.
From the Burger Stack Challenge that has home cooks building towering monstrosities to the moody, perfectly lit food photography that makes you want to lick your phone screen, social media has fundamentally changed how we discover, create, and consume burgers. Let's dive into the trends that are dominating feeds and reshaping burger culture from the ground up.
The Smash Burger Takeover: From Niche Technique to TikTok Superstar
If there's one burger trend that social media can take full credit for amplifying, it's the smash burger. Sure, this technique has existed for decades—Oklahoma onion burgers pioneered it during the Depression—but TikTok transformed it from a regional specialty into a global phenomenon practically overnight.
The appeal is obvious when you watch it unfold on your screen: a ball of ground beef hits a screaming-hot griddle, a heavy spatula comes down with satisfying force, and the patty spreads thin with edges that immediately start to sizzle and crisp. The sound alone—that aggressive sizzle and crackle as the Maillard reaction does its magic—is ASMR gold. Add in a close-up shot of those lacy, caramelized edges and cheese melting into every crevice, and you've got content that racks up millions of views.
What makes smash burgers perfect for social media isn't just the dramatic technique. It's accessible. You don't need fancy equipment or expensive ingredients—just a hot surface, decent ground beef (80/20 is the golden ratio everyone preaches), and something heavy to smash with. Home cooks love recreating viral recipes, and the smash burger delivers impressive results that photograph beautifully. The contrast between the crispy, almost burnt edges and the juicy pink center creates visual drama that translates perfectly to the screen.
Variations have exploded across platforms. Smash burger tacos emerged as a 2025 dinner favorite, combining the crispy-edged technique with soft tortillas. Double smash burgers, triple smash burgers, and even smash burger sliders have all had their viral moments. Each iteration gets dissected in the comments: "You need more pressure," "Toast the buns longer," "Season AFTER you smash." The communal learning aspect has made everyone an expert.
The Burger Stack Challenge: When More Becomes the Goal
If smash burgers represent technique perfection, the Burger Stack Challenge represents pure, unapologetic excess. The premise is simple: stack at least five layers of patties, cheeses, and toppings into a burger so tall it becomes structurally unsound. Then film yourself trying to eat it.
This challenge captures everything social media loves about food content—it's visually impressive, slightly absurd, and creates an inherent narrative tension. Will the burger hold together? Can they actually get their mouth around it? The comments fill with both admiration and horror: "This is a work of art," sits right next to "This is why other countries make fun of us."
But beyond the spectacle, the Burger Stack Challenge has pushed creative boundaries. Participants experiment with different cheese melts between layers, alternate bacon and onion rings for textural contrast, and engineer burger architecture that would make a structural engineer weep. Some creators have turned it into legitimate content series, with themes like "Breakfast Stack Burger" featuring hash browns and eggs, or "Nacho Stack Burger" with chips, queso, and jalapeños layered throughout.
The challenge also highlights an interesting social media dynamic: the gap between what performs well on screen and what actually makes sense to eat. A five-patty burger is objectively ridiculous as a meal, but it's perfect as entertainment. Restaurants have caught on, offering "challenge burgers" designed more for Instagram than for practical consumption, knowing that one photo can generate more marketing value than traditional advertising ever could.
Weird and Wonderful: When Virality Trumps Taste
Then there are the trends that make you ask, "But why?" Social media's algorithm rewards novelty, and sometimes that means burgers that exist purely to provoke a reaction.
The Gatorade Burger became a perfect example in 2024. Someone decided to boil ground beef patties in Gatorade instead of grilling them, and the internet collectively lost its mind. Food safety experts quickly weighed in (it's unsafe, don't do it), but not before the video racked up millions of views. The trend highlighted social media's double-edged sword: visibility doesn't equal endorsement, and viral content can spread harmful ideas as easily as helpful ones.
Watermelon burgers, the Ramen Burger (using fried ramen noodles as buns), and various dessert burgers that blur the line between sweet and savory all follow similar patterns. They're designed to make you stop scrolling. Some, like the Ramen Burger, actually taste good and demonstrate creative problem-solving. Others are pure engagement bait—outrageous enough to generate comments and shares, regardless of whether anyone would actually want to eat them.
The comment sections on these videos reveal as much about internet culture as they do about food. Half the comments are people calling it disgusting, which ironically boosts engagement and pushes the video to more viewers. The other half are either defending it ("Don't knock it till you try it") or tagging friends ("We should make this"). Either way, the algorithm wins.
Instagram Aesthetics: The Photogenic Burger Rises
While TikTok favors process and entertainment, Instagram remains the kingdom of the perfectly composed shot. The platform has elevated burger photography into an art form, complete with trends, techniques, and an unspoken set of rules for what makes a burger "grammable."
The 2025 aesthetic leans dark and moody. Gone are the bright, flat-lit burger photos of the early Instagram era. Now, photographers embrace dramatic shadows, rich tones, and contrast that makes the burger look like it belongs in a Dutch still life painting. This style works particularly well for hearty, comfort food burgers—think thick patties, melted cheese cascading down the sides, and sesame seeds catching the light on a glossy brioche bun.
Minimalism has also carved out significant space, with clean compositions, carefully curated negative space, and monochrome backgrounds that let the burger be the undisputed star. Bold color blocking—a bright yellow bun against a deep blue background, or a classic burger on vibrant orange—directs the eye exactly where photographers want it.
Gourmet burgers photograph exceptionally well because they're designed for visual impact. Gold leaf (however questionable its culinary value), shiny truffle oil, caviar perched on top, and other luxury ingredients exist partly because they signal "special" in a single glance. Our Fig Jam Prosciutto Goat Cheese Burger embodies this Instagram-worthy aesthetic with elegant toppings that photograph beautifully. Plant-based burgers have mastered the Instagram game too, often photographed with the same lush appeal as beef burgers, making it impossible to tell the difference at first glance.
The onion-wrapped Flying Dutchman burger from In-N-Out became Instagram famous precisely because it photographs like a dream—golden caramelized onions surrounding melted cheese, with the kind of gooey cheese pull that's become the holy grail of food photography. Recreations flooded feeds, each trying to nail that perfect moment when you lift the burger and the cheese stretches dramatically.
The DIY Culinary Culture: From Screen to Kitchen
One of social media's most positive impacts on burger culture has been the explosion of DIY cooking content. Platforms have democratized culinary knowledge, with professional chefs and talented home cooks sharing techniques that were once closely guarded secrets.
Short-form videos and Instagram Reels are perfect for teaching. A 30-second clip can demonstrate how to achieve the perfect smash, when to add cheese for optimal melt, or how to butter-toast buns for maximum crispiness. The comments section becomes a community classroom where people troubleshoot ("My burgers always puff up in the middle"—"Make a thumbprint dimple before cooking") and share variations.
This trend has made home cooking more ambitious. People who once grabbed fast food now attempt restaurant-quality burgers at home, documenting their successes and failures. The feedback loop is instant—post your attempt, get comments, try again, improve. Food photography tips circulate freely, so home cooks learn to style and shoot their creations with the same care they put into cooking them.
Recipe creators have adapted perfectly to platform constraints. Ingredients overlay directly on video. Key moments get text callouts: "DON'T press down after flipping." Techniques break down into clear, repeatable steps. The best creators combine entertainment value with genuine education, making you laugh while teaching you why 80/20 beef works better than 90/10.
Sustainability Meets Social Media: The Story Behind the Burger
Food photography in 2025 isn't just about the food anymore—it's about the story. Instagram and TikTok creators increasingly showcase the journey: the farm where the beef was raised, the bakery that makes the buns, the garden where the lettuce and tomatoes grew. This farm-to-table narrative resonates with audiences who care about where their food comes from.
Sustainability has become a dominant theme in food content. Creators highlight reusable props, organic ingredients, and recyclable materials in their shoots. Plant-based burgers get framed not just as alternatives but as environmental choices, with content explaining the carbon footprint difference between beef and plant-based patties.
Restaurants leverage this trend by creating "behind the scenes" content showing their sourcing practices, sustainable packaging, and waste reduction efforts. A burger tastes better when you know the beef came from a regenerative farm and the packaging composts. Social media has made environmental consciousness not just acceptable but desirable—and marketable.
Restaurant Marketing in the Social Media Age
Smart restaurants understand that social media isn't just free marketing—it's the most effective marketing they have. A single viral post can drive more traffic than months of traditional advertising. This reality has changed how restaurants operate.
Signature burgers now get designed with Instagram in mind. That means visual drama: towering stacks, colorful ingredients, photogenic cheese pulls, and unique elements that beg to be photographed. Restaurants create "Instagram walls" with good lighting and appealing backgrounds, essentially building photo studios into their dining rooms. They encourage tagging and hashtags, knowing each customer post extends their reach.
Limited-time offerings and exclusive menu items generate urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out). "Only available this week" gets people in the door and their phones out. User-generated content becomes the restaurant's portfolio—hundreds of customers shooting and sharing their meals, each post a micro-advertisement to that person's followers.
The onion-wrapped Flying Dutchman burger exemplifies this perfectly. It's not on In-N-Out's official menu, but social media spread the secret menu knowledge until it became one of their most requested items. The company didn't pay a dollar for that marketing—customers did it themselves because the burger was share-worthy.
The Future: Where Virality Meets Culinary Evolution
Social media's influence on burger culture will only deepen. We're already seeing augmented reality filters that let you "try" a burger before ordering, AI-generated recipe suggestions based on trending ingredients, and hyper-local food trends spreading through neighborhood-specific hashtags.
The platforms will keep evolving, and burger trends will evolve with them. What won't change is the fundamental dynamic: social media rewards novelty, beauty, and shareability. Burgers that deliver on these fronts—whether through stunning photography, entertaining process videos, or jaw-dropping creativity—will continue to dominate feeds and drive culture.
The best part? This democratization means anyone can participate. You don't need a restaurant or culinary degree to influence burger culture anymore. You just need a burger, a phone, and something interesting to say or show. That accessibility has made the burger conversation richer, weirder, and infinitely more entertaining than it's ever been.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a burger go viral on TikTok?
Viral burger content typically combines visual appeal, satisfying sounds (the sizzle, the crunch), an element of novelty or surprise, and accessibility that makes viewers think "I could do that." The smash burger technique went viral because it delivers on all these fronts—dramatic visual transformation, great sound, and simple execution.
Are viral burger trends actually good to eat?
It depends. Trends like smash burgers and specific topping combinations usually taste as good as they look. However, some viral trends prioritize shock value over flavor—like the Gatorade burger, which food safety experts warned against. Use common sense: if it looks ridiculous and potentially unsafe, it probably is.
How do restaurants benefit from Instagram-worthy burgers?
Restaurants gain free marketing through user-generated content. When customers photograph and share meals, each post reaches that person's followers, creating organic advertising. A single viral post can drive significant foot traffic and brand awareness worth far more than the cost of creating a photogenic burger.
What burger photography style is trending in 2025?
Dark and moody photography with dramatic shadows and rich tones dominates in 2025, along with minimalist compositions featuring negative space and bold color blocking. The focus has shifted from bright, flat lighting to more artistic, magazine-quality styling that tells a story beyond just the food.
Can home cooks really recreate viral burger recipes?
Absolutely. Most viral burger trends, especially smash burgers, are designed to be accessible with basic equipment. The DIY culture on TikTok and Instagram specifically focuses on techniques anyone can master at home with practice. The community aspect means you can ask questions and get tips from others who've tried it.
Conclusion
Social media hasn't just documented burger culture—it's actively reshaped it. What makes a burger successful now extends beyond taste to include visual appeal, shareability, and story. The platforms have democratized culinary knowledge, turned home cooks into content creators, and given restaurants new ways to connect with customers.
Some trends are silly. Some push the boundaries of food safety or good taste. But underneath the viral chaos, there's genuine creativity and community. People are more excited about cooking than ever, more willing to experiment, and more connected to the stories behind their food. The burger, America's most iconic sandwich, has found its perfect medium in social media—unpretentious, endlessly variable, and always ready for its close-up.
Whether you're stacking five patties for the 'gram, perfecting your smash burger technique through TikTok tutorials, or just appreciating the moody food photography filling your Instagram feed, you're participating in a cultural moment. The burger has always evolved with the times. In 2025, it's evolving at the speed of a scroll.