Burger King foot lettuce

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The Burger King foot lettuce image posted to 4chan Burger King foot lettuce.jpg
The Burger King foot lettuce image posted to 4chan

In July 2012, a minor fast food scandal took place in which an anonymous Burger King employee posted a photo of himself standing in plastic bins filled with lettuce onto the imageboard website 4chan. Users on 4chan soon determined via the photo's Exif data that the image was taken at a Burger King location in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. This resulted in marked damage to Burger King's brand image online as well as the firing of three employees. The incident has repeatedly gone viral. [1] [2]

Contents

Incident

On July 16, 2012, an anonymous user on 4chan posted a photo taken three days earlier [3] showing a Burger King employee standing on two restaurant insert pans of lettuce with the caption "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King." [1] [4] Within fifteen minutes, other 4chan users (including members of hacker group Anonymous) were able to determine the photo was taken at a Burger King restaurant in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, through Exif metadata which accompanied the image as well as a barcode on a box. [5] [6] [7] They began calling the restaurant and sending the photo to local news outlets, and the Mayfield Heights Facebook page was inundated with the photo and comments referencing it. [8]

Three employees at the restaurant were fired, and the incident prompted an investigation by the Cuyahoga County Board of Health. [4] [9] The lettuce was thrown away the day after the photo was taken and before it was served to customers, as a manager had noticed that the lettuce was dirty. [3] [9] [10] A textbook on crisis communication published by Cambridge University Press cited poor management supervision and inadequate social media training at Burger King as possible contributing factors to the incident. [11] : 198 

Reactions

Burger King issued a statement shortly after, saying that the restaurant was independently owned by a franchisee and highlighting their "stringent food handling procedures". [12] A textbook on social media strategy published by vdf Hochschulverlag  [ de ] praised Burger King's response for its speed and decisiveness. [13] : 84  Still, the image caused significant damage to the brand image of Burger King. [9] [14]

The meme saw a resurgence in early 2018, when YouTuber Chills (also known as Top15s) included the photo and its story as the opening segment of a video covering mysteries solved by 4chan users, introducing it as "number fifteen: Burger King foot lettuce". [9] [15] The cadence of Chills's voiceover, perceived to be odd and unnatural, was widely mocked and parodied. Several remixes of Chills's voiceover were created and shared, including an annotated version uploaded to lyrics site Genius. [9]

The Takeout writer Richard DiCicco described the meme as "one of the internet's longest-running jokes", while Eater writer Paula Forbes wrote "Someday parents will tell stories like this to little kids to scare them from posting things they shouldn't on the internet." [9] [16]

References

  1. 1 2 Grover, Neha (December 13, 2023). "2012 Burger King Foot-Lettuce Controversy Returns To The Spotlight And Goes Viral". NDTV Food. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  2. ↑ "Man behind viral 'Burger King foot lettuce' meme reportedly dies". Stuff. July 16, 2025. Archived from the original on July 17, 2025. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  3. 1 2 "Burger King employees fired after social media stunt". Akron Beacon Journal. July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 29, 2025.
  4. 1 2 Cavazos, Shaina (July 20, 2012). "3 Mayfield Heights Burger King employees fired for involvement with viral Internet photo". cleveland.com . Archived from the original on July 18, 2025. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  5. ↑ Grzegorek, Vince. "4Chan Catches Mayfield Heights Burger King Employee Who Snapped Pictures of Himself Standing on Food (Updated)". Cleveland Scene. Archived from the original on February 16, 2022. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  6. ↑ Zhang, Michael (June 19, 2012). "Lettuce-Defiling Burger King Employee Located Using EXIF Data, Fired". PetaPixel.
  7. ↑ Greengard, Samuel (November 2012). "On the Digital Trail". Communications of the ACM. 55 (11): 20.
  8. ↑ Golijan, Rosa (July 18, 2012). "Feet-in-lettuce photo hits Internet, gets Burger King employees fired". TODAY.com. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 DiCicco, Richard (October 25, 2024). "The Fast Food Lettuce Controversy That The Internet Will Never Forget". The Takeout. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  10. ↑ "Board of Health Provides Details on Burger King Photo Flap". Fox 8. July 19, 2012. Retrieved July 29, 2025.
  11. ↑ Sheehan, Mark; Quinn-Allan, Deirdre (April 15, 2015). Crisis Communication in a Digital World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-316-27687-7.
  12. ↑ "Burger King Fires 3 Employee in Lettuce Photo Posted Online". Fox 8. July 17, 2012. Archived from the original on July 18, 2025. Retrieved July 16, 2025.
  13. ↑ Lardi, Kamales; Fuchs, Rainer (2013). Social Media Strategy: A Step-by-step Guide to Building Your Social Business. vdf Hochschulverlag AG. ISBN   978-3-7281-3557-5.
  14. ↑ Orr, Sheridan (July 19, 2012). "Feet in the lettuce: The curious incident of employees, social media and a brand". Retail Customer Experience. Archived from the original on July 20, 2025. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
  15. ↑ Jaramillo, Carmen (February 26, 2020). "Wave cable meme hack affects 3,000 Jefferson County residents". Port Townsend Leader. Archived from the original on April 6, 2020. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
  16. ↑ Forbes, Paula (July 17, 2012). "Burger King Employee Gets Busted by 4chan For Super-Gross Lettuce Photo". Eater. Archived from the original on July 18, 2025. Retrieved July 17, 2025.
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