‘Who are the Chefs?’ How Snickers commercial with Andy Reid changed this KC actor’s life
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It’s been two years since Austin Senger made a Snickers TV commercial with Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. But people still recognize the curly-haired actor as the groundskeeper painting the end zone at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
People have yelled to him across the parking lot at Walmart.
“Who are the ‘Chefs?!’”
Yes, he’s that guy. The guy who makes a “rookie mistake” by misspelling “Chiefs” in the end zone, causing Reid to exclaim, “Great googly moogly.”
Senger might be the only person on the planet who can say they shared a spit bucket with one of the best coaches in the NFL.
The commercial still airs. Though it wasn’t a Super Bowl spot, Senger hopes it gets some air time this weekend because that acting gig changed his life. It was the most high-profile job he’s had in 11 years as a professional actor. It was filmed just months after the Chiefs beat the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII.
The rematch is Sunday.
“My family has been season ticket holders for nearly 20 years and I have been there nearly every game,” he said, “so you can imagine how big of a deal being in this commercial was for all of us.”
His three young daughters “can’t look at a Snickers bar without thinking of me,” said Senger, 31, who lives in Grandview and owns Steve Austin’s GutterWorks. “The 4-year-old, we’ve been watching TV and it pops up and she freaks out.”
Some people might not realize, Senger said, that the commercial was a remake of a Snickers ad that originally aired in 1996. In the first version, the groundskeeper is the one who mutters “great googly moogly” when a player points out his spelling mistake.
“Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers,” the voiceover says.
The 2012 Blue Valley Northwest graduate made the commercial after spending eight years trying to build an acting career in L.A.
A couple of weeks after graduating from Northwest, where he did some theater work but was also a swimmer and diver, “my entire plan was to move to L.A. So I did just that,” he said. “I moved to L.A. with nothing in my pocket but a lot of hopes and dreams.”
He took acting classes where he was the “kid from Kansas with a big curly Afro and my vulnerability was what made me stand out,” he said. “Of course they thought I grew up on a farm.
“But I guess they just really hadn’t heard of a guy from Kansas actually taking the leap at 18 years old.”
He scored work in some commercials, including a Super Bowl spot for Samsung, he said. “But I will say years went by with no work,” he said.
He made money teaching private swimming lessons, giving classes in beautiful backyard pools in Beverly Hills, he said.
One day he got a call for lessons from a woman who said her name was Stephanie. He recognized the voice. “When I showed up it was Flo from Progressive. It was the voice. I knew I knew it.”
He asked the actress, Stephanie Courtney, a “ton of questions” about show business. “And she basically said just keep doing it. The worst thing you can do is stop.”
He scored minor roles on three TV shows that are listed on his IMDB page. When COVID hit in 2019 and all the acting work dried up, he came back to Kansas City. He felt like he’d just wasted almost eight years of his life.
“Dang, I’m now the person I never wanted to be and I ended up moving back home to my parents in Overland Park. It was very tough,” he said. “It still kinda hits me hard. I moved home. The dreams were crushed.
“But, I will say there is a light at the end of this tunnel.
“At the time I didn’t know what I was going to do here. Long story short, I met a girl, fell in love, got married, I have a beautiful home. I now have a purpose. I now feel there’s a reason I moved home other than COVID.
“So I started climbing on roofs and started doing what I’m good at. I’m really good at fixing people’s houses. I like climbing on ladders.”
Take a bite, spit it out
Senger he didn’t give up acting. He got an agent and kept auditioning.
“Of course commercials, that’s pretty much all that’s here (in KC), as far as the industry,” he said. “As far as TV shows? There’s no TV shows. But commercials, they get filmed here in Kansas City.”
He made commercials for the Nebraska Lottery and Planet Fitness. One day his agent called and said “we have a good one for you.”
“Keep in mind I had been auditioning for three or four years,” Senger said.
His agent said it was a Snickers commercial “with a Chiefs celebrity” but didn’t mention Reid.
Senger felt good about his audition, but from experience he knew it was best to temper his hope. A few days went by.
Then his agent called and said, “dude you got it.”
“He said this is actually going to be a big one. We didn’t want to tell you,” said Senger, who thought he was making another regional commercial.
He thinks he got the job because “I knew how to look like I knew was I was doing,” he said. “When I’m spraying the letters, that’s an actual spray paint gun they use on the field.”
Plus, he had real work boots. The costume was basic: work pants and a polo shirt.
The scuffed-up work boots are his.
“They wanted me to bring all my boots. So those are my boots that I’m wearing. They liked how rustic they looked. It’s because I work on roofs,” he said. “They look dirty. That’s what they wanted.”
In August 2023, just a few months after the Chiefs beat the Eagles to win the Super Bowl, he spent about eight hours filming at Arrowhead.
“Aside from the job itself I was just so excited to meet Andy,” he said. “He was only there for a couple of hours. He was only needed for those shots that he’s in.
“He’s very humble and nice and quiet. He always has assistants by him. There’s a lot of people tending to him. He’s very calm, cool and collected.”
Senger has a picture of his family at a Chiefs game from back when he was in high school. They’re sitting in their seats with the field in the background — and the end zone he ended up painting in the commercial.
“You would think that we remade that commercial based on where I am in the middle of that picture,” he said. “It’s a great foreshadowing.”
Senger pointed out his family’s section to Reid, “and he said, ‘That’s right, baby. We show up and we show out.’”
The commercial shows only Senger taking a bite from a Snickers bar. But both men had to chomp down on the candy during filming, he said.
“We took bites from many Snickers,” Senger said. “He was taking bites with me. We did many takes. They didn’t know if they maybe wanted him to take the bites or me take the bites, so we did many variations.
“In one of those takes we’re both standing there chowing down looking very puzzled. They didn’t end up using that.”
Senger estimates that he and Reid each took about 30 bites from bars in custom wrappers with big letters that showed up well on camera. They didn’t actually eat the candy, though Reid said later he got free Snickers out of the deal.
“So we had a person next to us with all these specially stocked Snickers,” he said. “And they had us spit in a bucket because they didn’t want us to get our teeth all chocolatey.
“Maybe he hasn’t done that with too many people, but he did it with me. It was fun. Just chowing on candy bars and spitting ... into the same bucket. Almost bumping noses.
“One of these days I’m going to run into him and I’m going to catch up. I would love to see him just because I haven’t seen him since then. I would love to be like, ‘Thanks, Andy, for really changing my life.’”
The commercial became part of Snickers’ national “Rookie Mistake” series. It ran on TV, streaming, digital and social media channels.
It’s been seen around the world, which is so surreal to Senger.
“It seems it has traveled further than I could ever imagine,” he said. “It not only airs during big games or popular TV shows but also pops up on ads on our phones, on various social media apps.
“I see it pop up organically and, again, you can imagine the feeling, little me in this big world, just some kid from Kansas.
“I click into the comments under the commercial and I am just in awe. I see complete strangers saying stuff like, ‘He went to my high school,’ or, ‘He worked on my neighbor’s house,’ or, ‘His name is Austin Senger.’”
Fortunately for Senger, he really does like Snickers.
“I do. Actually, believe it or not, it’s always been one of my favorites,” he said. “It especially is now. And really, they don’t pay me to say that. I really am a fan.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
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