Fast Food is fully ingrained in American food culture.Merriam-Webster coined the term in 1951, finding its inspiration in the early 20th-century American eating habits. Hamburger historian George Motz names Louis Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, the first business to serve ground meat between two bread layers. Established in 1895, it laid the foundation for a new style of dining out.
In the subsequent decade, the fast food revolution was born. It's impossible to imagine a world without fast food, but that doesn't mean that these businesses have been without controversy. Beyond critiques of the quality of food at these establishments, there have been plenty of scandals involving fast-food restaurants over the years.
1. A Rat in My Kitchen
In 2023, a TikTok video exposed a McDonald's restaurant in Notting Hill Gate, London, where a sizable rodentscuttled beneath tables, followed by frantic staff and a broom. The restaurant issued a statement, promising that the site was being deep cleaned and hygiene standards would be better than ever.
Moreover, there is no evidence anybody ordered a “McRat” as a joke in the aftermath.
2. Leaving a Tip at Wendy's
When I lived in America some years ago, Wendy's became my favorite burger joint, though I am glad I never ordered the chili. In 2005, Anna Ayala of San Jose, California, discovered a human fingertip in her chili bowl. However, we can thankfully relieve Wendy's of any wrongdoing.
Ayala conspired with her husband, who acquired the finger from a coworker who lost the digit in an industrial accident. They planted the finger, which Ayala had even pre-cooked, in the chili, hoping to get a payout. The dim couple's lawsuit cost the restaurant chain $21 million in business, but they both received solid jail terms for their antics.
3. Women Belong Where Now?
We must add that Burger King (not Burger Queen) got in hot political waters in 2021 after a tone-deaf tweet on X (formerly Twitter). Citing inequality with the number of female chefs represented in the restaurant industry, Burger King's social media department brainstormed their way to a Tweet that read, “Women belong in the kitchen.”
The tweet included a thread below that said, “If they want to, of course.” However, chaos ensued, and Burger King deleted its tweet and then published an apology for the misguided statement.
4. McDonald's and the Hot Coffee
In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck visited her local Albuquerque McDonald's restaurant, unaware she would become the most famous visitor for many years. In a landmark civil lawsuit, Liebeck sued McDonald's after her takeout coffee spilled on her lap, giving her third-degree burns.
Though Liebeck was willing to settle for $20,000, the company offered only $800, so the case went to trial. The jury initially demanded McDonald's pay out $3 million in damages for Liebeck's ordeal, though the judge reduced the damages to $480,000. Coffee was served cooler (allegedly) from that moment onward.
5. E. Coli in the Box
Tragedy struck a branch of American favorite Jack in the Box in 1993, changing the fast food landscape forever. Four children lost their lives after an E. coli outbreak infected a Seattle Branch of the burger chain. Furthermore, the majority of the kids were under ten years old, and 178 others developed permanent brain and kidney injuries.
The culprit was the “Monster Burger” sold at a discount, putting restaurants under strain with high-volume orders and leading to a dangerous number of undercooked patties.
6. The Krispy Kreme Klub
In 2015, another British fast food faux pas occurred at the Hull branch of Krispy Kreme Donuts. When developing initiatives to capitalize on the upcoming school midterm break, Krispy Kreme in Hull, England, offered a kids' club where young customers could enjoy donuts alongside other activities.
Sadly, they named it “Krispy Kreme Klub Wednesdays,” unaware that the initials spelled out “KKK,” the well-known American hate group infamous for their past treatment of black citizens. The store removed the named promotion from their Facebook page and apologized.
7. Dangerous Happy Meal Toys
In 2023, some Michigan mothers may have believed they'd entered a prison movie after finding a bright yellow boxcutter inside their kids' McDonald's Happy Meals. Parents couldn't believe their eyes in the Brighton restaurant when their children fished the tools from their boxes; however, the other Happy Meal was bought in Warren, 45 miles away.
The restaurant owners reasoned that the mistake may have been due to using Happy Meal boxes to store random items, such as string, tape, or box cutters, and had mistakenly used those storage boxes.
8. One Bleach Milkshake, Please
During the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, three police officers entered a Manhattan Shake Shack branch to collect a milkshake order. The three officers claimed the drinks were poisoned due to tasting strange, throwing them in the trash before manager Marcus Gilliam offered them vouchers for free food. Later that night, the officers reported feeling “sick,” and the restaurant soon became a crime scene as the New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested and detained Gilliam under suspicion of poisoning.
The resulting investigation, backed up by forensic and video evidence, found no wrongdoing; Gilliam duly sued the NYPD Police Benevolent Association the following year.
9. Dunkin' Exposed for Waste
A former Dunkin employee got in trouble for exposing the local branch where he worked when he released a TikTok video showing a glut of Dunkin donuts and munchkins dumped into a full-size trash can. The byline explains that exactly 312 donuts went to waste.
The video went viral, gaining over 33 million views, with Dunkin criticized by customers worldwide for their waste. Moreover, video creator and employee Bryan Johnston was fired for his inopportune revelations.
10. Meat Flavored French Fries
In 2001, McDonald's was sued by two Hindu vegetarians in Seattle after discovering that their french fries contained beef products. In earlier times, McDonald's cooked their fries in beef fat, though it switched to vegetable fat in 1990. However, the plaintiffs learned that beef fat was already used in pre-cooking and felt they had been conned.
McDonalds stated that it had never claimed there were no meat products in the fries, which came under “natural flavor” in the product's ingredient description. Nevertheless, McDonald's apologized and donated $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups.
11. Papa John Lets Himself Down
If a rant about his pizza chain's profits being down due to football players taking a knee wasn't enough, former Papa John's CEO John Schnatter further damaged his reputation after a bizarre comment in a conference call.
Schnatter reportedly used a racial slur when comparing himself to KFC figurehead Colonel Sanders regarding how the press treated him. He admitted his mistake soon after, issuing an apology statement for his vocabulary.
12. Expired Meat Embarrasses Yum Brands
Yum Brands is a multinational restaurant company and self-proclaimed “spin-off from PepsiCo,” which owns fast food giants KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and the Habit Burger Grill. In 2014, Yum Brands China was forced to apologize after a Chinese TV report showed alleged doctoring of meat labels in the Shanghai Husi Food plant, a company that supplied Yum Brands and McDonald's.
The expose showed damning evidence that out-of-date meat was being sold to clients, and ten employees were sentenced to prison.
13. A Badly Taken Salad CEO Tweet
While not all fast food is necessarily unhealthy, some brand representatives can find themselves in trouble with the online crowd for their word choice. When salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen's CEO, Jonathan Neman, posted on his LinkedIn profile an opinion related to obesity, asking whether there was an “underlying problem in the fact that “78% of hospitalizations due to COVID are obese and overweight people.”
Although Neman deleted the comment and apologized, he was accused of being fat-phobic.
14. Subway Spokesman Disgraced
Jared Fogle served for 15 years as a Subway spokesman and ambassador for weight loss, claiming in his talks how he'd lost 200 pounds eating Subway sandwiches. He was famous for a commercial in which he rips off a latex fat suit, describing the virtues of a Subway diet.
However, in 2015, Fogle was dropped from the Subway roster after being found guilty of soliciting minors and possessing indecent underage photos. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison: incidentally, one year for each that he served as Subway's spokesperson.
15. McDonald's Plagiarize an Adult Comic
Anyone who lived in Britain during the '80s and '90s would have seen copies of Viz magazine on newsstands. The anarchic, irreverent, lower-shelf comic for grown-ups never shied from controversial humor. Strangely, in 1989, McDonald's “borrowed” a Viz Top Tip, which read: “Save a fortune on laundry bills. Give your dirty shirts to Oxfam. They'll wash and iron them, and then you can buy them back for 50p.”
The burger chain used the joke in a radio ad seven years later, omitting the word “Oxfam” for “a second-hand shop.” Viz sued McDonalds and settled out of court, while McDonald's donated to a children's charity.
16. Beef With Taco Bell
California resident and Taco Bell lover Amanda Obney launched a surprising lawsuit at the restaurant chain in 2011, claiming that the beef in Taco Bell tacos, gorditas, and chalupas didn't meet United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards for meat. The legal firm handling her case alleged that the seasoned ground beef was less than 35% meat.
NPR reported that the firm, Beasley Allen, dropped the case after Taco Bell had adapted its marketing and labeling practices, a charge denied by the chain in a statement. “So here are the REAL percentages,” said the report. “88% Beef and 12% Secret Recipe.”
17. My Kingdom for a Horse
Usually, when the words “King” and “Horse” share the same sentence, medieval literature rhymes or tropes come to mind. However, in this case, it was “Burger King” and “Horse Meat” sharing a headline, which is never a good look.
However, the multinational burger joint had to admit in 2013 that some of its burgers in Britain and neighboring Ireland contained traces of horse DNA, though none was sold in restaurants. While horse meat is eaten in certain European nations as a delicacy, the news prompted a backlash with threats of a boycott.
18. A Festive Sugar Crash
In 2019, British health watchdog Action on Sugar studied British Main Street coffee chains' shocking use of sugar. The team found that certain products contained exorbitant carbohydrate levels.
The worst offending item was the “Starbucks Signature Caramel Chocolate with whipped cream, using Oat Milk (Venti),” which contained 23 teaspoons of sugar and 758 calories. This discovery prompted politicians to question these businesses' role in some Britons' lousy health.
19. Fresh Buns Are Too Hot
Burger chain Hardee's is renowned for pushing the envelope with the brand's print advertisem*nt campaigns. The chain is also popular in Asia, with Pakistan finding itself the subject of several risque adverts involving visual innuendos and tongue-in-cheek imagery.
One stood out, a “Fresh Buns” ad featuring Hardee's bread buns positioned like a certain part of the human anatomy. In a conservative Muslim nation such as Pakistan, this might be considered a brave move.
20. McDonald's Worker Soaks a Customer
The next story comes from a Sydney, Australia, McDonald's branch involving an abusive customer and a triggered worker throwing a drink at him. In a viral video, the troublesome man, who had gone behind the counter to agitate the workers, responded by returning fire with another drink after striking the front counter.
While this story qualifies as scandalous, it would be hard for anyone to disparage this McDonald's employee's actions, considering most of us would do the same thing in his place. There is only so much abuse one can take from Joe Public.
21. Krispy Kreme's Creative Accounting
Three executives at the giant donut company were fined $600,000 following the New York Times expose of an accountancy scandal. In 2005, the newspaper found Krispy Kreme to have conceded losing $25 million in botched accounting.
Moreover, an SEC review in 2009 found that the company had inflated its profits, though the outcome was far worse for the three executives who lost money and reputation. Krispy Kreme maintained the whole time that no wrongdoing had taken place.
22. Bad News for Iced Coffee Lovers
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has always been partial to the odd expose, and in 2017, they had Britain's largest three coffee outlets, Starbucks, Cafe Nero, and Costa Coffee, firmly in their sights. Sadly, it was bad news for customers, as the BBC Watchdog found that each of the companies' ice drink products contained toilet-based matter.
This dangerous, bacteria-riven material can make its way into products due to poor hand-washing practices. While each company issued statements of concern, no further news on this matter has been forthcoming.
23. Wendy's Not Being Fair
The Fair Food Program describes itself as “a unique partnership among farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions for the people who feed our families.” In short, the organization helps agricultural workers get a fair shake, and only one sizeable fast-food chain is yet to sign up: Wendy's.
This news caused an uproar in 2022 when 800 protesters gathered in Palm Beach, Florida, to protest the company's refusal to join the cooperative.
24. Starbucks' Tax Dodging in Europe
Americans may feel proud of this one, though tax-paying Europeans were not too amused in 2012 when Starbucks was accused of tax-avoidance practices in the UK and Ireland. The company had transferred its tax royalties to its headquarters in the Netherlands, which rewarded them a few years later with a nice tax break.
Thankfully for the British treasury, the company was ordered by antitrust regulators to pay €30 million back in overdue payments.
