A man seeking free chicken nuggets has set a new record for the most retweeted post on Twitter. Carter Wilkinson’s tweet has passed the 3,430,249 retweets of Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie — and his poultry plea has paid off.

Wilkinson acted after cheekily asking Wendy’s last month how many retweets he would have to get to earn free nuggets for a year. Either Wendy’s had already established a corporate policy on that rather specific issue or its social media team doesn’t have to go through a lengthy review process as only a matter of seconds later it replied with the target of 18 million.

Wilkinson then screenshotted the exchange and urged followers to “HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS.” It’s not quite clear what the tipping point was when the post went viral, but it happened within a couple of days and major brands were soon jumping on the bandwagon, furthering its reach.

While it’s possible the retweets would have eventually stalled, the prospect of beating the record was enough to keep the momentum going, and a playful appearance by Wilkinson on DeGeneres’ talk show was enough to put it over the edge.

While the target of 18 million retweets certainly seems far out of reach, Wendy’s has granted Wilkinson his free nuggets anyway as a reward for breaking the record. It has also donated $100,000 to an adoption charity. Meanwhile Wilkinson has attracted more than 100,000 followers and used that platform to promote breast cancer charity Pinnochio’s Moms On The Run.