Kroger issued a statement Thursday after a viral TikTok video condemned their selection of Juneteenth cakes as “some bullsh*t.” The Georgia bakery appeared to put very little effort into the decoration, using the wrong colors and sloppily writing “free” in off-center icing on one of them.
The items were gone the next day, but not replaced with anything better.
“Free @ Last”
On Wednesday, the day before June 19, TikTok user @blaq.monalisa filmed the Juneteenth bakery selection in Atlanta, Georgia. She was not impressed.
“Who the hell made this ugly a** sh*t?” she asked.
@blaq.monalisa Kroger count your days. Why even bother if you’re going to lack creativity. This is Kroger on Howell mill rd, Atlanta Ga. This is a mockery! Am I tripping, someone let me know!
♬ original sound – blaq monalisa
“I wish there was a manager here because y’all decorate everything else around here cute,” she continued as she panned the camera across the rest of the bakery items. “Everything else around here cute, but for Juneteenth you wanna just throw something on a freaking cookie cake and expect someone to buy it?”
Only one of the cakes has anything close to the proper colors for the holiday. Traditionally, Juneteenth’s official flag is red, white, and blue. The Pan-African flag in red, black, and green also often makes an appearance.
One Kroger cake features some black and green, among other colors, topped with what looks like an off-center upside-down paper plate. Others are in blue and yellow, with phrases like “Free @ Last” or “June 19 Free” or just “Free” slapped on a big cookie in icing with a border. Another says “congratulations” in plastic letters.
Commenters felt just as let down as the TikToker.
“Gurl! Not the last one saying Congratulations,” said @senatorbeasleymd. “Like Congratulations You’re free!”
“You should’ve just flipped the table over,” wrote @kandaced.
Kroger apologizes for their Juneteenth cakes
The video gained over 10.9 million views in less than two days and soon spread to other social media sites. With that kind of virality, Kroger had to respond.
In a statement to Newsweek, the company claimed that the cakes were not up to their usual standards.
“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,” a spokesperson said. “The products have been removed, and we’ve addressed this directly with the store teams and the customer who took the initial video.”
@blaq.monalisa Went back to Kroger, Howell mill rd, Atlanta Ga. They removed the cookie cakes, or I guess someone purchased them!
♬ original sound – blaq monalisa
TikToker @blaq.monalisa did not mention speaking to Kroger in her follow-up video. However, she did find that the sad Juneteenth cakes were gone from the bakery section. The bad news is that staff had replaced them with nothing at all.
“I still feel some type of way that they didn’t replace it with better Juneteenth cakes,” she said before pointing over all the 4th of July options.
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