Indeed, the Tweet unquestionably drew a lot of attention.
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Burger King U.K. declared new scholarship program planned explicitly to help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary careers. As the fast-food chain clarified, just 20% of culinary experts are women, which is something they were wanting to change. Lamentably, the manner in which they declared the program — with a tweet reading “Women belong in the kitchen” — didn’t agree with numerous social media users.
At first, Burger King U.K. protected its tweets, yet the organization has since apologized for its choice of words.
“We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we’re sorry,” Burger King U.K. wrote on Twitter. “Our aim was to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in U.K. kitchens are women and to help change that by awarding culinary scholarships. We will do better next time.”
The organization posted another tweet clarifying that it had erased the underlying message that started the outrage.
“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,” the chain added.
As they recently revealed, the Twitter string that at first sparked backlash against Burger King U.K. was proposed to declare another H.E.R. (Balancing Restaurants) scholarship program. Most social media commenters, notwithstanding, reacted contrarily to the main tweet in the series, which just read, “Women belong in the kitchen.”
Even after Burger King UK explained its goal, social media clients kept on calling the organization out for “misogynistic baiting.”
In an explanation acquired by they preceding the first Tweet’s cancellation, a representative for Burger King said the brand is “committed to helping women break through a male-dominated culinary culture in the world’s fine dining restaurants – and sometimes that requires drawing attention to the problem we’re trying to help fix.”
The statement continued: “Our tweet in the UK today was designed to draw attention to the fact that only a small percentage of chefs and head chefs are women. It was our mistake to not include the full explanation in our initial tweet and have adjusted our activity moving forward because we’re sure that when people read the entirety of our commitment, they will share our belief in this important opportunity.”