Los Angeles woman tries to get a discount at Auntie Anne’s before closing and learns what happens to unsold pretzels: ‘What a wasteful place’

A visit to an Auntie Anne‘s location in Los Angeles didn’t go quite as planned for TikTok creator CrystalUnscripted. She stopped by shortly before the mall pretzel chain closed for the night, hoping to walk away with a deal on leftover product. But the answer she got from the staff wasn’t what she expected.

In the clip, Crystal explains that she approached an employee as the store was winding down for the day. “Hey, you’re about to close. Um, can I, you know, maybe get it half off?” she recalls asking.

According to the woman, an employee told her, “No, actually, we sell… every 30 minutes, we just throw them away if no one buys them.” When she pushed further and asked why the store didn’t just discount the leftover pretzels instead of tossing them, the alleged response was blunt. “Nope, corporate policy.”

Why not just discount them?

Crystal didn’t hide her reaction on camera, calling it “What a wasteful place” before adding, “I don’t think I wanna buy pretzels from Auntie Anne’s anymore.” In the video’s caption, she softened that stance somewhat, writing that she gets “there’s freshness for a reason” but that the scale of it “seemed worse than usual,” adding she’s leaning toward stepping back from the chain for now.

Discarding unsold hot food after a set window isn’t unique to Auntie Anne’s. Food-service businesses often follow time limits on how long prepared items can remain on sale, with the FDA Food Code requiring certain food to be served or discarded within specified time limits. Those rules can also leave food-service workers in hot water over how expired or leftover product gets handled, as seen when a Starbucks worker was fired over expired food. 

The video’s comment section, which has drawn hundreds of replies, leaned toward defending the practice rather than criticizing it. “That happens every single place you buy food in the world,” one person wrote. Another commenter, Tyra, was more pointed, telling her, “you asking for it half off is more annoying than them throwing it away.” 

A third reply, from Eric Freeland, blamed health code standards rather than corporate stinginess, writing: “following health code standards, every food item has a specific time on storing for sale, because those items are set to a specific standard most corporations would rather throw it away than ‘chance’ someone getting ill.”

Crystal’s frustration over what happens to food once it can no longer be sold isn’t limited to pretzel counters. A retail worker recently raised a similar complaint after tossing out piles of usable food, arguing it should go to people in need instead of a dumpster. 

For now, Crystal says she’s holding off on buying from Auntie Anne’s, though she stopped short of calling for a wider boycott. As of this writing, the company hasn’t issued any public statement addressing the video or its policy on unsold pretzels.