London: Fast-food chain Burger King's United Kingdom division sparked an outcry on Monday as critics accused the brand of using a sexist trope as a clickbait.
Burger King sparked an uproar with a tweet that read, "Women belong in the kitchen" on International Women's Day. But the chain remarked that the messaging was tied to its launch of an initiative to help increase the number of women in head-chef roles as part of their gender equality campaign.
"Women belong in the kitchen. If they want to, of course. Yet only 20 percent of chefs are women. We're on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career," the tweet read.
Burger King further said, "We are proud to be launching a new scholarship programme which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!"
Meanwhile, the company's way of drawing attention did not go down well with the netizens. Food chain KFC also trolled Burger King and tweeted a meme which read, "The best time to delete this post was immediately after posting it. The second best time is now."
However, Burger King hit back at KFC. "Why would we delete a tweet that's drawing attention to a huge lack of female representation in our industry, we thought you'd be on board with this as well? We've launched a scholarship to help give more of our female employees the chance to pursue a culinary career," the multinational chain of hamburger fast food restaurants said.
"We are 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," Burger King's spokeswoman, Lauricella said.
As of now, the original tweet has been deleted.
Social media users were quick to jump in and criticised the move of deleting the tweet stating that deleting "does not fix anything".
However, some hailed the said tweet as a "brilliant marketing" strategy. They even called to "bring back the tweet".