On the morning of April 11, Springville native Jacob Sargent and seven of his friends from around Utah County set out to break the Guinness World Record for most fast-food restaurants visited in 24 hours.
This is the latest event in an epidemic of Utahns spending their weekends undertaking physically dubious feats. From the Whale-a-thon, the Chuck Rally, the Man Who Summited The Eight Crowns, and the Classic Skating Odyssey, something must be in the water that is making men eat copious amounts of food or run a copious amount of miles or sometimes both. In this case it’s both.
The current record for most fast-food restaurants visited in 24 hours is held by Munachimso Brian Nwana, who visited 150 restaurants in Abuja, Nigeria over 24 hours. Part of what made Nwana’s record so remarkable was that the title was previously held by New York City residents who had the benefit of a high density of restaurants in a relatively small area. The Guinness rules state that no private transportation is allowed in the attempt, so Nwana made his journey on foot.
So, too, did Sargent and his friends, who also happen to be his running companions. Together they ran 40 miles between 176 restaurants.
Sargent, Gio Ramirez, Mason Braithwaite, Anna Braithwaite, Henry Giles, Shane Kaiser, Joseph Carwin and Jason Call started their running and eating adventure at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday. They had originally planned to meet at Del Taco in South Jordan, order, then head to the next nearest fast-food establishment. But their day started with a minor hiccup when they discovered Del Taco was closed. They wondered if this was a bad omen. “There were some doubts that the whole day was going to be a mistake,” Sargent told me. But the McDonald’s they ran to next was open and serving breakfast. According to Sargent, the rest of the day went smoothly, or as smoothly as running 40 miles between over 150 restaurants and eating something at each can go.
The Guinness rules state that something has to be consumed at each restaurant, either by the runners or other patrons, and only 25% of the orders could be for beverages. The rules also state that a restaurant manager has to sign the order receipt to be submitted as proof alongside photos and videos. So the group decided to divide and conquer. At each restaurant one person ordered the food — usually whatever was already available on the counter or could be made available in the shortest amount of time — and someone else found the restaurant manager to sign the receipt. Another participant kept all the receipts in a binder “like a binder you would use for Pokemon cards,” Sargent explained.
This system proved most challenging at pizza places where every order had to be cooked over time they could not spare. So they got creative and drank sauces to minimize their time spent in Domino’s. At a few Mexican stops they ordered a tortilla and a cup of pico. Whatever would arrive the quickest.
Sargent built a tracker for friends and family to follow along with the group’s progress. A few friends and family members surprised the group and partook in a few of the orders. And a number of strangers mentioned they, too, were following the tracker, in all likelihood thanks to Sargent’s mom posting about it repeatedly on Facebook.
Because it was an April day in Utah, the weather for the journey was unpredictable. Temperatures rose dramatically in the morning, then it rained. Then it hailed. Then the sun came out again. Then clouds covered the sun. “It was a little bit of a mixed bag,” Sargent said. “But ultimately at the end of the day, I’d say it was pretty perfect conditions for what we were trying to do.”
To keep a sustainable pace throughout the day, the group committed to not running faster than a 10-minute mile, and to keep themselves from feeling terrible they split small orders at every restaurant. They had planned to donate much of the food to other patrons, but because they were visiting these restaurants at odd hours, there were not many other patrons around. So they’d split a bag of chips or a small order of fries. “I wasn’t sure how long we could do that, but we ended up being able to do it for the whole time for all 176 restaurants,” Sargent explained. “I expected to feel worse than I did.” Sargent said he didn’t feel any real physical effects until the following Monday when he threw up in the middle of the night.
At that point in the conversation I asked Sargent what could possibly have inspired him and his friends to try to break this record. “I’ve always enjoyed coming up with different challenges,” he explained. “The types of adventures where you can accomplish something large in one day have always been appealing to me.”
Sargent added that he was inspired by videos he had seen of influencers attempting to break world records and decided there had to be one he was capable of beating. So he got on the Guinness World Records website and searched until he found a record he was confident he and his friends could beat.
And they did. They visited 176 restaurants in Salt Lake County between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The record will become official once Guinness has reviewed the receipts, photos and videos. On whether or not he’ll try and fight for the title if someone tries to break his record, Sargent said, “If someone else gets it, then props to them because now I know the amount of work that it takes. I wish them the best.”
“I wouldn’t do it again,” he said.
