In July 2012, a minor fast food scandal took place in the United States, in which an anonymousBurger King employee posted a photo of himself standing in plastic bins filled withlettuce onto the imageboard website4chan. Users on 4chan soon determined via the photo'sExif data that the image was taken at a Burger King location inMayfield Heights, Ohio. This resulted in marked damage to Burger King'sbrand image online as well as the firing of three employees. The incident has repeatedly goneviral.[1][2]
On July 16, 2012, an anonymous user on4chan posted a photo taken three days earlier[3] showing aBurger King employee standing on two restaurant insert pans oflettuce with the caption "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King."[1][4] Within fifteen minutes, other 4chan users were able to determine the photo was taken at a Burger King restaurant inMayfield Heights, Ohio, throughExif 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 theCuyahoga 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 oncrisis communication published byCambridge University Press cited poor management supervision and inadequate social media training at Burger King as possible contributing factors to the incident.[11]: 198
Burger King issued a statement shortly after, saying that the restaurant was independently owned by afranchisee and highlighting their "stringent food handling procedures".[12] A textbook on social media strategy published by vdf Hochschulverlag praised Burger King's response for its speed and decisiveness.[13]: 84 Still, the image caused significant damage to thebrand image of Burger King.[9][14]
The meme's popularity was renewed in 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] Several remixes of Chills's voiceover were created and shared, including an annotated version uploaded to lyrics siteGenius.[9]
The Takeout writer Richard DiCicco described the meme as "one of the internet's longest-running jokes".[9]
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