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Kayne West fan forced to change restaurant menu following legal letter from rapper

By | Published on Friday 1 July 2022

College Dropout Burgers

A Kanye West fan has been forced to change the logo and meal names at his burger restaurant following a cease and desist letter from the rapper. He’s still able to call it College Dropout Burgers though. So that’s nice.

“The brand was created to celebrate him”, owner Mark Elkhouri tells 7News of his burger selling business in the Australian city of Melbourne. “But it’s what he wants”.

Elkhouri says he launched his restaurant in honour of West because he is a big fan. As well as being named after the rapper’s debut album, ‘The College Dropout’, it also featured a logo based on the artwork of that record, a menu of meals named after his songs, and a mural of West inside the restaurant.

Being such a big West fan, Elkhouri was excited when the rapper began flicking through his restaurant’s Instagram stories recently, thinking that maybe the admiration went both ways.

“The fact he was viewing our stories and was there had me believe he was a fan of us”, he tells The Age. However, it appears that West was actually concerned that people might think the restaurant actually had something to do with him. Because obviously.

“It’s pretty hard being a Kanye West fan with this situation, [but] we have to respect his wishes and move forward”, says Elkhouri. “Being a Kanye West fan has led me into this position where I have to still support him … I am extremely disappointed, there’s no doubt about that, but it doesn’t even come close to the impact that he’s had on my life”.

Having announced that a Kanye-free rebrand was about to happen earlier this month, that refresh was this week unveiled. Now the restaurant’s teddy bear logo is covered with a black square and a message reading “Insert logo here. OK thanks bye”; the mural has been painted over; and the menu no longer offers the Golddigger chicken burger, the Cheezus cheeseburger, or the Good Morning breakfast burger. Although, to be honest, I think he could have probably got away with that last one.

He doesn’t want to get away with anything though, because he says he’s still a big fan of West and so doesn’t want to piss him off. Although, as part of the agreement, the restaurant has also agreed not to tell people that it takes any inspiration from the rapper.

Now, you might think that’s going to be difficult, given that it’s still called College Dropout Burgers. But that’s only because you don’t know about the clever new theme. Instead of aligning itself with West, the restaurant is now themed around other celebrities who dropped out of education.

So, if you like being confused when you order fast food, you can now get meals named after Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. What could possibly go wrong?

Elkhouri admits that being forced to make these changes could be positive for the business, as some potential customers were put off by the West association.

“Moving forward, I feel like it is a bit of a blessing in disguise”, he tells The Age. “Because let’s face it, not everyone is a Kanye West fan”.

This story is discussed on this edition of our Setlist podcast.



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