This story has been updated to reflect news from throughout the day.
Burger King's decision to play on the phrase “women belong in the kitchen” in a tweet meant to promote scholarships for culinary education backfired on Monday, leading the brand to later delete a tweet from its Burger King UK account that was misinterpreted worldwide as an International Women’s Day effort that missed the mark.
A full-page ad running in The New York Times shows the line in large font and follows with several lines that explain the idea behind Burger King H.E.R. (Helping Equalize Restaurants) scholarship, including the low representation of women in chef and head chef roles across the industry. On Twitter, however, the usage of the line was quickly misconstrued. Burger King U.K. tweeted out just the line “Women belong in the kitchen” on Monday morning, and it was only in subsequent tweets that the intended meaning was explained.
Later on March 8, Burger King U.K. deleted the tweet, and explained its reasoning in a separate Twitter post. "We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we’re sorry," it began in one tweet. A second tweet read: "We decided to delete the original tweet after our apology. 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 campaign comes from David Miami.