Kroger In Damage Control After Online Backlash Over Juneteenth Cakes: Report

Supermarket chain Kroger Co. (KR) faced backlash over the Juneteenth holiday after a TikTok video showing subpar cakes at one of its stores sparked criticism and drew negative sentiment online, according to a report by Newsweek.

The video, posted by the handle @blaq.monalis and received 850,000 likes, showed cookie cakes with minimal decoration, featuring text such as "Free @ Last" or "June 19 FREE." One cake simply read, "FREE."

Many saw the presentation as insensitive. The cakes in the video were reportedly at a store on Howell Mill Road, Atlanta.

Juneteenth, which became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and holds deep cultural and historical significance for African American communities.

According to the Newsweek report, the narrator said in the video, "I wish there was a manager here because ya'll decorate everything else around here cute. Everything else around here cute, but for Juneteenth you want to just throw something on a freaking cookie cake and expect someone to buy it?"

The backlash also spread to Reddit. A user said, "I don't think it's racially motivated or anything. It looks like someone told the closer (non-decorator) to fill a table at the end of the night."

Soon after, Kroger issued a statement saying the cakes were not as per the company's brief.

"The cakes and cookies that were featured in the video were inconsistent with our provided guidance and not of the quality we would expect to see from our stores," Kroger said in a statement to Newsweek.

"The products have been removed, and we've addressed this directly with the store teams and the customer who took the initial video."

According to Newsweek, the original poster later shared an update on TikTok showing that the cookie cakes had been removed from the grocery store. She added, "I still feel some type of way that they didn't replace it with better Juneteenth cakes."

Kroger shares are up 7.2% year-to-date.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for the company was 'extremely bearish' as of early Friday. Message volume jumped from 'high' to 'extremely high' in the past 24-hour period.

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