Liquid Death Wants You to Eat Human Flesh for Halloween

“Our meat-inspired menu tastes so much like real human, after just one bite you’ll be waiting for the police to arrive.”

As a treat for Halloween, canned-water company Liquid Death is joining with delivery service Postmates to offer a “Vegan Cannibal Steakhouse” menu in New York and Los Angeles.

This culturally driven brand always pops, and recently drew real human blood—Tony Hawk’s, no less!—for a fun promotion. Here, however, the fare features no actual people-flesh or bodily fluids, as we learn in the clip below:

Those diners really need some wetnaps! Clean-up at table five!

“Halloween is the one time of the year when the whole world embraces our brand aesthetic,” says Liquid Death VP of creative Andy Pearson, who developed the creepy campaign with agency partner Callen. “You see skeletons at grocery stores, kids dress up as ghosts, etc. So, we figure, how can we go even further and create something that genuinely scares people a little bit? And naturally, we thought: What if we could bring the health and sustainability angle we have with our mountain water to something a little more terrifying, like eating humans?”

There’s no physical restaurant, but the menu is real, available for a limited-time, and packed with plant-based, cruelty-free items such as:

• New Yorkerless Strip Steak: “Vegan human steak served with blood red reduction, whipped garlic potatoes, and spiced heirloom carrots.”
• Guiltless Grilled Rack of Sam: “Vegan human ribs served with minted mango-cerebrospinal-free chutney, sautéed haricot vert, and fingerling potatoes.”
• Manless Meatballs in Marinara: “Vegan human meatballs served on a bed of bucatini and garnished with brain-free cheese and fresh basil.”

Ha, “fingerling”—good one, Liquid Death! (It’s fingerless, too.)

Maybe we’ve got a trend afoot (or some other body part), as Swedish company Oumph! just introduced a “Human Meat Plant-Based Burger” to celebrate All Hallows. (Meatballs being a tad too on the nose, perhaps.) 

“For us, the most human way of having a burger is a plant-based one,” says Oumph! global brand lead Henrik Åkerman. In this promo from LOLA MullenLowe Madrid, a chef sports black-leather gore-flick gloves:

As for Liquid Death’s offering, “we researched what real cannibals have described human meat to be like,” says Pearson. “One said it ‘tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter.’ Another said it’s ‘like good, fully developed veal—not young, but not yet beef.’ Then we worked with a chef to bring that experience to life, so to speak.”

Suddenly, I’m not hungry anymore.

“Our audience is always people who appreciate humor,” Pearson says. “In this case, maybe it’s people totally terrified of the idea, too. Also, by partnering with Postmates to make delivery available, we’re tapping into a whole scene of foodies.

“We wanted to give people the opportunity to try human meat—without having to actually kill anyone, of course.”

Ah well, maybe for the next campaign.

CREDITS

Client:
Liquid Death
Co-Founder and CEO – Mike Cessario
VP of Creative – Andy Pearson
VP of Marketing – Greg Fass

Agency:
CALLEN
CCO/ Founder – Craig Allen
Art Director – Matt Nall
Writer – Kyle Davis
Director: Craig Allen
DP: James Lee Phelan
Producer: Janice Woods
Producer: Katie Jewett