Burger King customer says workers refused an item she could literally see on the menu — former employees explain why

A trip through the fast-food drive-thru is supposed to be pretty straightforward. You look at the menu, place your order and drive away with whatever you asked for. But one TikTok creator’s recent experience at Burger King suggests that things can get a little more complicated when the people taking your order don’t know how to make what’s on the menu.

The video was uploaded by Emme Benoit (@emmebenoit1) and has racked up more than 4.7 million views. In it, Benoit records herself at a Burger King drive-thru menu board, repeatedly asking viewers to “look” at the options.

She says she wanted two of the chain’s heavily promoted Orange Dreamsicle Freezee King beverages, a limited-time summer drink made with a frozen beverage base, orange cream-flavored cold foam and a crunchy crumble. Benoit specifically ordered the more elaborate drink rather than a basic orange slushie.

There was a surprisingly blunt explanation

There was just one problem: The employees working the drive-thru told her they didn’t know how to make it.

When Benoit pointed out that the drink was right there on the menu board, one employee gave her a surprisingly blunt explanation:

“We have stuff on the menu all the time that we don’t make.”

Benoit was clearly frustrated by the exchange and tagged Burger King in her caption. She said she had been a loyal customer but felt let down by what she saw as a lack of training and basic service.

At first, some viewers wondered whether the restaurant had simply run out of the ingredients or whether this was a one-off training issue. Then former fast-food workers began filling the comments with stories of their own.

Several claimed that new menu items can sometimes reach individual restaurants before employees have been properly trained to prepare them. According to one former worker, corporate would introduce new items without always telling the restaurant staff.

“They would get new menu items all the time and not say anything to us. There were numerous times customers would order something from the new menu [that we didn’t know existed],” the user wrote.

Another former employee said workers were sometimes left to figure out new menu items by looking at the drive-thru board themselves or waiting for a customer to order something they had never seen before.

High turnover at individual franchises can make situations like this even more difficult. A restaurant may have a new menu item advertised across its signs and screens while the employees actually taking orders have little or no experience preparing it.

This is the less polished side of fast food

That leaves customers in a strange position: They’re looking at something Burger King is actively advertising, only to be told by the person behind the counter that the restaurant doesn’t know how to make it.

At the time of writing, Burger King’s corporate media relations team had not issued a public response to Benoit’s video or the former employees’ comments.

For now, Benoit’s video has offered viewers a glimpse of a less polished side of fast food — where what appears on the menu isn’t necessarily what the people behind the counter know how to serve.