Burger King on backfoot over tweet on women belonging to the kitchen

Apart from juicy Burgers and delicious fries, Burger King is also known for their quirky and sometimes provocative campaigns loved by many. Whether it was a masterstroke with the “Moldy-Whopper” campaign or “A Day Without Whopper” to help their competitor, these campaigns definitely struck the right chord with the customers.

However, on this International Women Day, the right chord wasn’t really struck. With the intent to draw attention to the lack of female representations in the food industry, Burger King put out a tweet and print ad that read “Women Belong In The Kitchen”. While this does sound atrocious, the message further explained the intent and their initiative for Women’s Day. The print ad made this clear, however, the tweet wasn’t taken well by Twitteratis and instantly backfired with #Boycott.

Here’s how Twitteratis reacted:-

I knew there was a reason I’ve been avoiding Burger King my whole life

— Milo Manheim (@MiloManheim) March 8, 2021

I knew there was a reason I’ve been avoiding Burger King my whole life

— Milo Manheim (@MiloManheim) March 8, 2021

Proof this could have even fit in one tweet

Please don't use sexism as clickbait. The men in my mentions proves the damage you're causing by doing this. pic.twitter.com/G0VKGgiZQp

— Becca (@BeccaBeckery) March 8, 2021

Burger King had the perfect setup to go with Burger Queen for the day but chose to publicly execute their social media people instead.

— Anthony (@BigJigglyPanda) March 8, 2021

burger king's female employees asking for equal pay pic.twitter.com/JdtqgUk5KR

— b (@doyalikebaileys) March 8, 2021

 Seeing the backlash on social media, Burger King deleted the original tweets and said “We’ll do better next time”. They also backed it with an apology. Here’s what they had to say :

We decided to delete the original tweet after our apology. It was brought to our attention that there were abusive comments in the thread and we don't want to leave the space open for that.

— Burger King (@BurgerKingUK) March 8, 2021

According to media reports, Fernando Machado, Global CEO, Restaurant Brand International (Parent company of Burger King) issued a statement recognizing the flak received for the campaign and still hoped it will drive awareness in support of expanding the number of women leaders in the culinary world.

With this campaign, Burger King was to announce the launch of its H.E.R. (Helping Equalize Restaurants) Scholarship. Through this scholarship, Burger King would offer financial assistance to women employees with aspirations to an academic degree in culinary arts.

Despite all the clarification, the flak and hatred that you see above continued.