Burger King’s International Women’s Day Tweet Goes Down In Flame

“Women belong in the kitchen.” For Burger King’s United Kingdom division, those five words tweeted on International Women’s Day prompted a day of flame-grilled outrage from social media users.

 

The tweet was meant to be a humorous tease for a campaign promoting a cooking scholarship for female employees, but it fell flat.

https://twitter.com/kendallybrown/status/1368959876966342662?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1368959876966342662%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fembedly.forbes.com%2Fwidgets%2Fmedia.html%3Ftype%3Dtext2Fhtmlkey%3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935schema%3Dtwitterurl%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fkendallybrown%2Fstatus%2F1368959876966342662image%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Fi.embed.ly%2F1%2Fimage3Furl3Dhttps253A252F252Fabs.twimg.com252Ferrors252Flogo46x38.png26key3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935

Follow-up tweets put the first tweet in context: “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio.”

Unfortunately for Burger King, many Twitter users never got past that first tweet, which hung there for hours and attracted a litany of abusive comments.

The fast-food giant’s social media team spent the rest of the day issuing explanations and apologies, and finally removed the tweet.

The campaign worked much better in print. In the United States, the Burger King Foundation ran a full-page ad yesterday in the New York Times with the same headline, “Women belong in the kitchen,” emblazoned above the fold in a huge font.

The ad offered immediate context through the copy: “Fine dining kitchens, food truck kitchens, award-winning kitchens, casual dining kitchens, ghost kitchens, Burger King kitchens. If there’s a professional kitchen, women belong there.”

The ad continued: “But can you guess who’s leading those kitchens these days? Exactly. Only 24% of chef positions in America are occupied by women. Want to talk to head chefs? The number drops to fewer than 7%.”

Like many fast-food brands, Burger King has enjoyed a boost in popularity during a pandemic when drive-through lanes became a socially distant solution for hungry travelers and hometown diners alike.