Is It Even Possible to Sell Food Truck Burgers Without the Dumbest Sex Puns You’ve Ever Heard?

What is it, exactly, about the job of a food truck proprietor–particularly one specializing in selling meaty, masculine-coded food like burgers–that seems to necessitate a very specific type of bawdy, “we get a little blue around here” humor and marketing strategy? Are men only comfortable eating half a pound of grilled beef if it comes with a pun or two about dicks and balls? Without a little innuendo about oral sex, is it even possible to sell a $17 burger to an aging millennial father wandering around the farmer’s market, trying to keep an eye on a 5-year-old knocking over carefully placed display pyramids of equally overpriced soap and raw honey? And does my well-established preference for free speech and the defeat of petty local government tyrants outweigh my utter resignation toward defending the kind of business that thinks a slogan like “you’ll love our meat in your mouth” represents the height of comedy?

I guess, at the end of the day, I must throw myself in with the makers of the absolutely laziest jokes about beef imaginable, because the alternative is being on the side of the farmers market operator who is telling the same Indiana burger food truck that they don’t have the right to sell sandwiches to people because of their punny obscenities, and I certainly can’t throw in with that group. With that said, if burger truck operators ever attempted to resist hackneyed jokes about “meat” and “buns” for even a moment, I would truly and genuinely appreciate it. Maybe workshop a little new material? Am I asking too much?

listen. i’m not a prude. i am not some victorian type lady who is scandalized by mild mentions of sex. but the trend of vulgarity/sexual innuendos in product marketing is gross. i don’t want a “daily fucking affirmation” book nor do i want to see “you’ll love our meat in your mouth” on a food truck

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— inthefade (@ihavethatonvinyl.com) 1:52 PM · Jul 20, 2026

The truck in question bears the sort of name you already know it must: Smash Daddy’s Burgers, Fries, Etc. They are, as the name would imply, an Indiana smash burger truck specialized in selling ostentatiously large, very expensive smash burgers at festivals, breweries, outdoor markets, etc. Fun fact: I wrote “$17” in the paragraph above entirely as a joke before visiting their website, and sure enough, that’s exactly what their namesake burger actually costs. And until recently, they were selling those pricey burgs on a weekly basis at the Indianapolis Statehouse Market every Thursday, apparently making a killing … until the state, which runs the event, told the burger truck to pack it up because of “complaints” about the heinous slogan, “You’ll love our meat in your mouth.” If you listen hard, you can faintly hear the sound of all the pearls being clutched several states away.

“I mean, we make burgers and hot dogs, so you’ll love our meat in your mouth,” said owner Scott Sims to a local publication, adding that “I could count on one hand the complaints I’ve had over the last 20 years. But I’m sure, and as they did, some people took it the wrong way.”

Is it really so much a case of someone taking a dumb joke the “wrong way”? Sims sounds as if he’s trying to make some kind of claim that an obvious sex pun isn’t a sex joke after all, when the only legitimate argument to be made here is “It’s a harmless (and stupid) joke, and not something worth banishing us over.” Likewise, Sims really has precedent on his side, in the sense that his truck was allowed to work the same Statehouse Market every week for the last two years without anyone ever batting an eye at the truck and slogan that now apparently registers as a profound moral failing and threat to public decency. The owner said his truck would lose around $5,000 in revenue from the two upcoming Thursdays at the market that the truck was instructed not to show up for. Sounds like a basis for the most eye-rolling First Amendment/free speech case Indianapolis has ever seen!

“Participation of food trucks and other vendors at the Statehouse Market is by invitation and is at the discretion of the State Personnel Department,” said Kirollos Barsoum, communications director of the State Personnel Department and clearly the unlucky person selected in this scenario to be the public face of a government that was successfully scandalized into action by a “meat” joke. “We routinely evaluate vendors based on a variety of operational and programmatic considerations, and we reserve the right to modify the vendor rotation or discontinue participation at any time.” Amusingly, the Indy Capital Chronicle asked Barsoum if it could review any written complaints about the burger truck that the government had received, only to be told “no responsive written records exist.” Sounds like it must have just been a tidal wave of shocked and outraged citizens, does it not?

Smash Daddy’s Burgers, Fries, Etc. participated in the Statehouse Market for around two years. Now, its participation has been revoked over a slogan on the side of the truck. @indianacapitalchronicle.com

Read more: indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/07/17/f…

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— WFIU/WTIU News (@wfiuwtiunews.bsky.social) 1:12 PM · Jul 17, 2026

Whether the state has a legal right to bar the burger truck from the Statehouse Market event just over its slogan would depend on whether the words rise to the level of being denoted as “obscenity,” according to Zachary Cormier, a professor of law at Indiana University also quoted by the Capital Chronicle. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the bar of what constitutes obscenity is quite high and rarely cleared. Or as Cormier put it: “Usually these types of business slogans are meant to be provocative. You know, maybe even have some type of sexual connotation or double entendre, don’t normally rise to that level. If it’s just the slogan, I think there would be a real concern about this not rising to the level of formal obscenity.”

So bring on the First Amendment lawsuit, basically. You can add this to the long, long list of local governments making unforced errors to target individuals for bureaucratic retribution based on the personal whims of small, vocal communities that object to them, with rationales that amount to “I think everyone in the world should share my sensibilities.” How many people in Indiana were genuinely scandalized by the stupid slogan of Smash Daddy’s, beyond thinking it was beyond cliché? Why did no one object to the truck’s presence at the same Indiana Statehouse Market every week for two years, until it suddenly became problematic overnight? Who is the person in state government who is actually willing to take ownership of making such a decision to tell a small business to vacate, based purely on puritanical vibes? Can we get an actual statement explaining why the ancient church biddy who was presumably horrified by “You’ll love our meat in your mouth” ultimately has more power over who is allowed to participate in local commerce than thousands of other people who don’t give a shit about a slogan? It doesn’t seem like a great system where power is ultimately being wielded primarily by the demographic of “whoever is most easily offended.”

As is pretty much always the case in these scenarios, no matter how many times they happen, the resulting publicity and Streisand effect will no doubt bring more attention and business to the burger truck than they’ve ever had before, while making the Indianapolis officials who buckled under the pressure of one or two “complaints” (that they can’t furnish on request to local media) look like local villains who are targeted for mockery and ridicule in the community. That even includes ridicule from me, a person who in any other instance would have been booing Smash Daddy, not for obscenity but for the pure, tacky laziness of this kind of performative frat bro marketing. As is, my final word on it is this: Let the bros sell their overpriced, deeply contrived burgers in peace, and let the rest of us get back to First Amendment cases that should actually matter.