NYC Falls for Cruel, Viral Hoax About In-N-Out Pop-Up

Though In-N-Out Burger is mostly confined to the West Coast, the fast food chain has, on occasion, graced other parts of the globe in the form of pop-ups: London, Sydney, Vancouver, and Zurich have all been so lucky.

Conspicuously absent on this list is New York, though you wouldn't know it had you been one of the 40,000 people who RSVPed to a fictitious pop up that spread quickly over Facebook this past weekend. The event, advertised by a group that bills itself 'NYC Popups' (it has just over 300 likes as of writing), would allegedly run from October 27 through 29 in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood.

The NYC Popups page didn't exist before October 14, the same day it happened to post that event, promising quite a bounty of programming, including art, music, and free hats and "NYC edition t-shirts" for attendees. It didn't take long for the event page to ricochet around Facebook, fooling New York's most gullible and hungry for Animal-Style fries.

In-N-Out quickly dampened the excitement on Monday, when representatives confirmed that this pop-up was, in fact, a hoax, and those who had fallen for the con were out of luck; the chain didn't have any plans to host pop-ups within New York City in the future. "We hope that no one is inconvenienced by this apparent prank," a terse statement from Denny Warnick, In-N-Out's Vice President of Operations, read. ("It is not happening," an In-N-Out representative told MUNCHIES dryly over phone on Wednesday, saying that she's had to field multiple calls of this nature since Monday.)

What a shame. But whoever runs the NYC Popups account seems to be having a real field day: The page hasn't been updated since Monday afternoon, when it posted a picture of all the breathless headlines the hoax had engendered.

"At least it was fun to dream," the caption reads. Boy, was it ever.