Burger King Scrambling After Feet-in-Lettuce Photo Hits Web

It only takes a few bad apples, along with some dirty lettuce, to give a fast-food company some major headaches. Much as Domino's did in 2009, Burger King is now scrambling to contain the damage after footage of employees behaving in a disgusting manner leaked on to the Internet. This time, it's a photo of a Burger King worker standing in some lettuce. The image was initially uploaded to 4Chan and captioned, "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King." Sleuths quickly looked at the geo-location tags and determined that the photo was taken at a BK in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The image soon spread through social media after Mayfield Heights's town Facebook page began to get deluged with comments. BK corporate was soon on the case. The franchise in question was said to be independently owned and operated, but Bryson Thornton, BK's director of global communications, told an NBC blogger that three guilty employees had already been identified and fired. Thornton added this statement: "Burger King Corp. has recently been made aware of a photo that shows a Burger King restaurant employee violating the company’s stringent food handling procedures. Food safety is a top priority at all Burger King restaurants and the company maintains a zero-tolerance policy against any violations such as the one in question." Of course, zero tolerance doesn't mean zero damage. We surely haven't heard the end of this one. UPDATE: Thanks to Adweek's Alfred Maskeroni for the proposed BK window ad below—perfect for the Mayfield Heights location!