They say that victory is sweet, but in Phil James‘ case, it was also pretty spicy.
On Wednesday afternoon amateur competitive eaters and community members gathered at East Village’s Tacopocalypse for the second Change Challenge.
James (left) of Merit Resources stepped in to fill an empty place hours before the challenge and stole the show, devouring the “Hot Mess Express”—literally every item on the Tacopocalypse brunch menu—in six minutes and two seconds.
Tacopocalypse owner Sam Auen created the “Hot Mess Express” one day for an extra-hungry friend one day during Brunchpocalypse and decided it would be perfect for the Change team’s contest.
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“It’s making me giggle a lot,” Auen told the crowd Wednesday. “I don’t know if you heard us, but it’s never a good sign when you have maniacal laughter coming from the kitchen.”
Previously Auen says the record for finishing the dish was around 11 minutes and 30 seconds.
But Change’s eating challenge wasn’t just for fun—the team was celebrating some major milestones. In Sept. 2013, Change surpassed 100,000 transactions on its iOS point-of-sale app. Now the app has surpassed 235,000 transactions and has been downloaded more than 10,000 times. Change also announced it is working with Heartland Payment Systems to process credit card payments in app and is in the process of rolling it out to all Change’s users.
Other Change Challenge competitors included Josh Dreyer of Willis Auto, Blake Crabb of RAYGUN, Stephanie Hall of DSM is NOT Boring and Morgan “Morgue” Umsted of the Des Moines Derby Dames.
This isn’t the first time Change has celebrated milestones with a food-related challenge—last June the startup hosted an eating contest at Des Moines craft hotdoggery Hotshots.
Credits: Photo from Change’s Twitter.
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