Chick-fil-A ordered worker to stop posting TikTok hacks — now she has a deal with Shake Shack

One former Chick-fil-A employee is shaking things up.

An employee at the fast-food chain was told to stop posting menu hacks on TikTok — and now she has a deal with Shake Shack instead.

Miriam Webb, known as @MiritheSiren on TikTok, started working at her local Chick-fil-A in California in April 2023 when she was at a low point, having just gone through a breakup and losing her job as an executive assistant to a Harvard professor.

“I was going through a weird little breakup at the time that I started making these videos. I usually would call this person on my lunch break and couldn’t call them anymore. So I was, like, ‘OK, well fine. I’m going to make TikToks.’ I wanted to distract myself,” Webb, 22, told People.

Webb — who logged 12-hour shifts at Chick-fil-A on top of a second job at Aldi — started making videos of her employee meals during lunch on Dec. 9, where she shared her breakfast while sitting in the break room in her uniform.

The St. Louis native eats and speaks to the camera as if she’s having a meal with a friend, and she invites her followers to join her.

As her follower count and view count grew from thousands to millions, she started adding menu hacks to her content, such as how to get a chicken sandwich for cheaper, ordering sweet tea and vanilla creamer to create milk tea, plus reviews of new menu items.

It wasn’t until her review of of Chick-fil-A’s new Cherry Berry drinks blew up with 3.6 million views that the company noticed her videos.

“[A news outlet] reached out to Chick-fil-A about it for comment. They were, like, ‘Hey, how do you feel about your worker making these videos?’ And Chick-fil-A was, like, ‘No comment, but who are you talking about?’” Webb shared.

While she didn’t get in trouble, she was told she can no longer post her videos while in uniform nor while she’s at the restaurant — she would have to take the food home and record from there.

But Webb thought that would diminish the reliability, saying, “Those videos were all posted in real time. It’s not that I was against that idea, but that felt like there was an authenticity of me being at work.”

On April 15, she posted that the brand asked her to stop making the videos, writing in the caption: “Chick-fil-A Corporate has asked me to stop making content. I’m sorry you guys :/ Thank you for all the support and love but an era has ended.”

Fans in the comments applauded her, and many commented that stopping her videos would be a “huge loss” for Chick-fil-A.

Meanwhile, another fast-food chain hoped on the chance to take advantage of what influencer James Charles called Chick-fil-A’s “HUGE missed opportunity.”

“Shake Shack’s owner is from St. Louis, and I’m originally from St. Louis. I’ve always loved Shake Shack and eating at Shake Shack was always like eating at home for me,” Webb explained.

Webb posted her first video as a Shack Shake partner on April 21 and garnered 3.9 million views — and they now have a long-term partnership in the works.

“CFA dropped the bag and Shake Shack grabbed it,” someone commented.

She has also since shared sponsored posts with El Pollo Loco and Zaxby’s, and thanks to those opportunities, Webb now gets to focus solely on social media instead of working 12-hour shifts.

“I kept telling my mom, ‘Please pinch me. Is this actually happening? What’s happening left and right?’” she laughed.

But there’s no love lost with Chik-fil-A — she sees the whole thing as a learning experience.

“I think my year at Chick-fil-A was a year of PR training. You do a lot of heart-searching at Chick-fil-A because you got to be nice to everybody,” she explained. “Don’t matter if they yell at you, scream at you, whatever it may be — you have to keep your composure. When I see mean comments, I’m, like, ‘Could respond or could say, I love you, have a good day.’ And that’s what I do.”