A Memphis chicken restaurant was closed and several of their employees were retrained after a whistleblower exposed the popular eatery for being unsanitary.
After being fired for making videos in the restaurant about other employees, Tykeia Ransom filmed and uploaded videos on TikTok of roaches scurrying on the walls, on the floors, on the sink, and also in the food.
After the videos went viral, the Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen restaurant on 4720 Showcase Boulevard was shut down.
Ransom recorded her manager firing her and shared that episode on her profile. The manager explained that it was against Popeyes’ policy to record inside their establishments and to record people working for them. She explained that TikTok is a popular social modality, and the video that she created went “very viral.”
The single mother didn’t realize that recording was a problem. The manager apologized for not informing her but still fired her. Ransom, who worked there for just two months, didn’t leave without making a bang. She recorded various parts of the restaurant, revealing unsanitary conditions and vermin.
She also showed food, including the famous chicken, being left out and left in bins on the floor. She tried to bring these issues to the attention of management during her time there but was met with pushback, she claimed.
”I even got into it with the GM over the roaches being in the rice. Like, we got into it bad like she didn’t even wanna throw it away,” said Ransom to Action News 5.
“She was like, this is a product,” Ransom added. “I was like ‘Oh, OK, but it has roaches in it. I’m not finna serve that.”
Even more shocking was news that as recently as Wednesday, Sept. 20, the restaurant had passed health inspections with flying colors, according to the state Department of Health.
On Thursday, Sept. 21, Popeyes released a statement.
“Absolutely nothing about the condition of the restaurant in this video is acceptable. Even though the Health Department visited yesterday and confirmed no issues at the restaurant located at 4720 Showcase Blvd, Memphis, TN, we shut it down, thoroughly cleaned and will not reopen until we understand what happened and team members have been retrained on proper procedures,” the corporation said.
Ransom also posted a video allegedly of a manager from the restaurant thanking her for what she did.
In a way, he said she was a hero and she had no idea what she did for the people in the community, leaving her to say in an interview with FOX 11, “If I didn’t get fired or didn’t say anything, they would still be serving the rice with the roaches.”
