- A woman said that her four-year-old's meal from a Burger King in New York was smeared with blood.
- At first, her daughter had thought it was ketchup on the burger, she said in a viral TikTok.
- Burger King said it temporarily closed the restaurant in New York for deep cleaning and staff retraining.
Burger King temporarily closed a restaurant in New York for deep cleaning after a TikTok video seemingly showing a meal smeared with blood went viral.
Tiffany Floyd went to a Burger King in Getzville, near Buffalo, on Friday to get a meal for her four-year-old daughter, according to her comments in the video and an interview with The New York Post.
"I heard, 'Mom! I don't want ketchup,' so I take the bag back, thinking that they messed up our order, and I look in her bag and there is blood all over her bag, her toy, her fries, everything," Floyd said in the video, which has nearly 1 million likes. The video shows blood splattered on the burger wrapper, while photos included in the Post's article show blood on the burger itself.
"So I instantly told her to spit out her food," Floyd told the Post. "She did have fries and a bit of her hamburger. And then I looked at my meal, and there was blood on mine too."
A Burger King spokesperson told Business Insider that the company was "deeply upset and concerned to learn of this incident" and that it had been in contact with Floyd.
"This incident was the result of a team member in the restaurant who injured his finger, and upon noticing immediately stepped away," the spokesperson said.
Burger King closed the restaurant to retrain the staff and hired an external company to complete a deep cleaning, the spokesperson said. An employee at the restaurant told BI that it had reopened on Monday.
Staff will be paid for shifts they lost during the closure, the spokesperson said.
Floyd said that she would get her daughter's blood tested every month for up to a year to see if she had contracted any diseases.
"Obviously, she is traumatized from this," Floyd added. "She's refusing to basically eat." Her daughter refused to eat a bowl of cereal because she thought blood was in it, Floyd said.
The rise of social media means that incidents like Floyd's can quickly and easily go viral. Some people use platforms like TikTok and X to pressure companies to compensate them for poor customer service or incorrect orders.