It was 6:30 a.m. and Lincoln Boehm and his wife Dara Katz were walking, ironically, to McDonald’s. It was then the California natives beheld a site for sore eyes — the gold standard of burgers — a lone In-N-Out double double sitting on the street.

“It genuinely shook me to my core,” Boehm told the New York Post of the burger of the west coast chain, no less than 1,500 miles from home. In-N-Out has locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah but its furthest east location is Kansas City.

My buddy Lincoln found a perfectly wrapped In-N-Out burger… On the streets of Queens, New York! I AM FREAKING OUT pic.twitter.com/TZbGvLn9N0 — David Gardner (@byDavidGardner) July 20, 2019

The alien burger was alone on a nearly empty block, “sitting comedically, like perfectly up on the street, completely untouched,” Boehm told the Post.

“We didn’t touch it,” he continued. “We stopped for a second and took photos and looked around to see if anyone else was noticing it and then we walked on.”

Boehm said the burger, despite its assuredly long journey, looked as if it had come off the grill five minutes ago.

Boehm is an expert on the matter and was able to confirm the burger’s identity. He said he’s had “over 1,000” In-N-Out burgers in his life and called them his “last death row meal.” He saw the trademark onion in between the two patties, lettuce at the bottom, and buns toasted in the franchise’s signature fashion.

Boehm said he’s tried to bring the burgers back to New York in his nine years since moving across the country, but they’ve never held. “Every time I’ve done it it becomes inedible,” he said. “The bun gets soggy and it becomes a mess. This one was just in such perfect condition… It just felt strange… at first I thought it was some sort of viral marketing thing.”

Boehm doesn’t believe it could be a stunt, because 6:30 am on a quiet street in Jamaica Queens would be a strange pick for product placement. He theorizes that “somebody incredibly wealthy who had a private jet… traveled with like 50 burgers and got here, and had a few extra left, and maybe, while driving to the airport was jokingly throwing them out of the car to people.”

Denny Warnick, vice president of operations for the company, was very surprised to hear about the mystery burger. “Because our burgers are only cooked fresh to order in six states, it must have taken considerable planning for that burger to make the trip from the grill all the way to the Empire State,” said Warnick to the Post.

Twitter is rampant with theories of how the burger landed on a Queens street. The cynics in us are tempted to believe the “viral marketing scheme” theory.

this is absolutely a “in-n-out is coming to nyc” viral plant marketing scheme and i hate it — rat king (@MikeIsaac) July 22, 2019

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