Barstool's Pepsi partnership was always going to lean hard into soccer season, but nobody had Chef Donny becoming the breakout star of the watch-party era. The cave has been transformed into a Match Special set — Pepsi 'Soccer Deserves' branding, the easel, the couches packed with the crew — and the food is doing more heavy lifting than any of the takes.
It started innocent enough. A quick homemade hummus segment, chickpeas in the food processor, a tidy plate next to a Pepsi Zero Sugar. Standard sponsored cooking content, the kind you scroll past and assume that's the whole bit.
Chef Donny opens the match-day menu with a homemade hummus and pita plate.
Then the menu got weird in the best way. Ćevapi Sausage Rolls — the Balkan grilled-sausage staple reimagined as cave snack food — showed up on a tray, with Donny scribbling 'Ćevapi' across the Match Special whiteboard like a chalkboard at a real pub. It's the most committed-to-the-bit Barstool sponsored content has looked in a while, and it actually works because the food matches the tournament vibe instead of fighting it.
Donny writes 'Ćevapi' on the Match Special board and feeds the couches mid-match.
From there it became a full traveling concession stand. The booth crew — headsets on at the Pepsi/New Amsterdam/DraftKings desk — got hit with poutine on a lower-third that literally read 'PEPSI CONCESSION STAND.' Whatever cynicism you want to bring to branded content, watching 5 guys try to call a soccer match while a tray of cheese curds and gravy lands in front of them is undefeated TV.
Poutine hits the soccer desk mid-broadcast and the booth folds immediately.
The smart play here is obvious: the World Cup is a month-long content furnace, and Barstool figured out that the food is the throughline. Hummus, ćevapi, poutine — every match gets a dish, the cave stays full, the Pepsi logo stays on screen, and nobody has to fake-care about a group-stage game between two countries they couldn't find on a map. Chef Donny might be the MVP of the whole tournament run, and we're barely getting started.