When Miriam Webb first shared her lunch for Chick-fil-A employees online in December, she didn’t think anyone would notice.
“I was going through a bit of a weird breakup at the time I started making these videos. Usually I would call that person on my lunch break and I couldn’t call them back. So I said, ‘Okay, fine. I’m going to make TikToks.’ I wanted to distract myself,” the St. Petersburg native tells PEOPLE. Known to Louis as “MiritheSiren” on TikTok.
In April 2023, the 22-year-old started working at her local Chick-fil-A in California during a transition period in her life. She had just lost her job as an executive assistant to a Harvard professor and was “feeling a little depressed.”
But she went to the fast-food restaurant with enthusiasm and positivity, telling the manager, “If you hire me, I’ll be a star. I promise I’ll come here and do everything I can and just be the happiest, best person I can be.”
And she did just that. Looking at online reviews for her Chick-fil-A location, one can find compliments about the employee, calling her a “rock star” and noting her “best energy.”
“The relationships I’ve built, not only with the people in my store, but especially with that community that surrounds Chick-fil-A,” she says. “There are a lot of high schools in the area. I’ve been to three of those kids’ graduation parties. I’m very, very connected in that community.”
A few months into her tenure, Webb, who worked 12-hour days at Chick-fil-A and another job at Aldi, began sharing her employees’ meals with followers online on Dec. 9.
From the start, Webb’s casual and inviting personality shone through her lunchtime outings. While sitting in the restaurant’s break room in uniform, she would recount exactly what she had for her meal, talking to the audience as if they were her friends.
Within a month, her videos grew from a few thousand likes to hundreds of thousands. Her content changed as her followers grew. Along with her employees’ meals, Webb shared secret menu tricks, like combining sweet tea and vanilla cream to create milk tea, and her thoughts on new menu items.
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She didn’t intentionally keep her videos — many of which have millions of views — under wraps, but Chick-fil-A didn’t notice her clips until April 8 when her TikTok previewed new Cherry Berry drinks.
According to Webb, it was the news outlet that broke the news to Chick-fil-A about her viral videos. “[The outlet] has reached out to Chick-fil-Au for comment. They said, ‘Hey, what do you think about your worker making these videos?’ And Chick-fil-A said, ‘No comment, but who are you talking about?'” she recounted.
Webb explains that she wasn’t in trouble, but was told she couldn’t post videos of herself in uniform or in a restaurant. She says she was told she could take her employee’s meal home to record videos there, but Webb thought that would detract from the honesty of her clips.
“All these videos are posted in real time,” she explains. “It’s not that I was against the idea, but I felt like I was being authentic at work.”
On April 15, she announced that she would no longer be doing Chick-fil-A video content on TikTok. Webb wrote in the caption that “Chick-fil-A Corporate asked me to stop creating content. I feel sorry for you guys :/ Thank you for all the support and love, but an era has ended.”
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Fans rallied around her in the comments section. Influencer James Charles commented on his support for Webb, writing: “What a HUGE missed opportunity for them, but you handled this with so much class.”
A day later, Webb says her DMs were flooded with messages from brands begging her to work with them, but Shake Shack’s message struck her the most.
“The owner of Shake Shack is from St. Louis, and I am originally from St. Louis. I’ve always loved Shake Shack and eating at Shake Shack has always been like eating at home for me,” she explains.
By April 21, the TikToker parted ways with Chick-fil-A and posted a sponsored video of him eating Shake Shack that “jumped into the sky.” Now, she and the burger chain have a long-term partnership in the works and has released sponsored videos with El Pollo Loco and Zaxby’s.
The opportunities are incredible for Webb, who now focuses entirely on social media. “I kept telling my mom: ‘Please pinch me. Is it really happening? What’s happening left and right?’” he laughs.
For Webb, there is no love lost with Chick-fil-A. “I’m still very proud of my job at Chick-fil-A,” she says.
Plus, her time at Chick-fil-A prepared her for some of the responses she gets online.
“I think my year at Chick-fil-A was a year of PR training. At Chick-fil-A, you question a lot because you have to be nice to everyone,” she explains. “It doesn’t matter if they yell at you, scream at you, whatever it is, you have to keep your composure. When I see mean comments, I say, ‘I could reply or I could say, I love you, have a nice day’. And that’s what I do.”
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Source: HIS Education