Michael Boes, a former adviser at the Health and Human Services Department who worked under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is stepping into a newly created role at Steak ’n Shake: chief MAHA officer.
The job, announced this week, will revolve around the nutrition, ingredients, and healthfulness of the restaurant chain’s food offerings. Boes said the job is more than a marketing title.
“It’s my first week, but I’ll tell you this, the leadership’s been great,” Boes told Fortune in one of his first media appearances since the role was announced. “They’ve opened the war chest to me. Nothing’s been off the table.”
Steak ’n Shake announced the appointment on Tuesday, making him the first person to hold the chief MAHA officer title at the chain—or in any corporate capacity across the country.
The company has already leaned into the “Make America Healthy Again” food movement, including by switching to beef tallow to cook tater tots and fries (which the chain called “RFK’d” fries on social media). It also embraced full-fat dairy, cane-sugar Coca-Cola, anti-seed-oil messaging, while also planning to eliminate microwaves from its restaurants.
“We’re looking at all ingredients and saying, how do we get back to real food?” Boes said.
From private to public—back to private
Before joining Steak ’n Shake, Boes joined HHS in April 2025 and worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health under Kennedy, where he was one of the architects behind turning the food pyramid upside-down.
Boes said he never expected to work in Washington and was “strictly private sector” previously.
“When Secretary Kennedy was named as the nominee for HHS, I just saw I couldn’t allow myself to sit on the sidelines to see these four years come and go,” he said, “recognizing a huge opportunity to make an impact.”
When asked about what went into the thinking behind switching up the food guidelines, Boes pointed to two hotly contested issues.
“It was kind of this notion of, like, meat’s expensive, so let’s just say bread is healthy and recommend bread,” he said. “What I learned was the policy before this was, one, climate change factors went into previous dietary guidelines. And more importantly, there was this weird spin on affordability.”
More than 60% of the country is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought this year. This has affected the production at nearly 70% of wheat farms, 29% of soybean farms, and 26% of corn. Trump’s tariffs equally proved detrimental for farmers: fertilizer prices quickly jumped as they were put into a trade war between the U.S. and Canada, and now are even higher thanks to the war in Iran, which blocked passage to a third of the global fertilizer supply.
“I think the Trump administration, Secretary Kennedy, like no administration, has been more supportive of farmers than any other one out there,” Boes offered.
Affordability also came for the grocery store. Americans have been dealing with record-high beef prices, in part due to Trump’s tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter. Experts have told Fortune beef prices could soar 60% by the end of this year thanks to the aftermath of tariffs as well as the affects of climate change. Others explained how the inverted food pyramid will be detrimental to lower- and middle-class Americans who already spend less on protein to begin with, and with new guidelines, increased meat costs will eat even more into their budget.
“When we briefed some very well-known nutritionists prior to the release of the dietary guidelines and let them know what we were doing, one in particular said, ‘You can’t do that. You’re going to kill the planet,'” Boes said. “There’s a thought process of, like, cows cause global warming through methane, so we need to tell people not to eat.”
“In our opinion, the dietary guidelines should have reflected gold standard science, and that’s what we went back to,” he added. “It’s like, what do Americans need to eat to be the healthiest version of themselves?”
Bringing MAHA corporate
Boes says he is trying to bring that agenda into the fast-food industry. “The central theme of the Trump administration and Secretary Kennedy was eat real food,” he said. “Fortunately, Steak ’n Shake has really been devoted to that message.”
Boes said he met Steak ’n Shake owner Sardar Biglari through a mutual contact and found the company already committed to the idea. “He was all in,” Boes said. “We really need an expert, because we want to be true in this mission. We don’t want to water it down in any sense of the term.”
Boes said he suggested the title himself. “I said, ‘Would you be open to calling it the chief MAHA officer?’” Boes recalled. “He said, ‘I absolutely love it.’ And the rest was history.”
Boes said the company may pressure suppliers to change, or look elsewhere if they do not.
“It takes an organization like Steak ’n Shake to demand this from suppliers, for them to make the change,” he said. “A lot of people are dragging their feet because of the fear of the profitability impact.”
Asked whether the company could switch suppliers, Boes said that was on the table. “Pressuring suppliers, or switching suppliers, right?” he said. “If suppliers are not willing to work with us, then I think we’re comfortable in saying that we’re going to have to find other solutions. No doubt.”
Boes shot down previous sentiment regarding whether there was a demand for this health agenda from the consumers themselves. He pointed to the tallow fries, which prior to his joining, the chain had monikered as “RFK’d” fries, as one such example. “Steak ’n Shake proved that to be false with their tallow fries and the growth of their same-store sales last year.”
“It’s a capitalistic economy. It’s supply and demand, right? And for what you’re discussing, it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg, and we’re taking the bold step to be the demand side, to impact the supply side.”
In all, he said he’s been given free rein by Biglari to lead the chain into the MAHA direction—even if that may come at a cost, at least in the short term.
“We’re not going to look at short-term profitability,” he said. “We’re going to do what’s right by the customer. And we know that if we do that, sales will follow and the market will reward that.”
