Overview

Golden Corral's Food Storage Controversy refers to the online backlash against the American family-style restaurant chain Golden Corral following the release of a YouTube video exposing their alleged improper food storage practices.

Background

On July 1st, 2013, Golden Corral employee Brandon Huber uploaded a video titled "all you can eat ribs," alleging that food was being hidden by dumpsters during a routine health inspection at a Port Orange, Florida location (shown below). In the video, Huber exposes several food items by the garbage, including pot roast, gravy, hamburger patties and raw baby back ribs. Within the first eight days, the video gained over 2.57 million views and 7,300 comments. On July 7th, Huber uploaded a follow-up video complaining about the restaurant's management practices (shown below, right).

Notable Developments

On Reddit

On July 8th, 2013, Redditor RageMau5 submitted Huber's video to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it garnered more than 37,600 up votes and 4,500 comments in the next 24 hours. The same day, Huber's follow-up video reached the front page of the /r/videos^[10] subreddit. Also on July 8th, several Redditors submitted image macros and animated GIFs joking about the controversy (shown below)^[11][12] and the /r/GoldenCorral^[13] subreddit was created.

News Media Coverage

On July 8th, several news sites published articles about the video, including USA Today,^[2] The Daily Mail,^[3] Los Angeles Times,^[4] NY Daily News,^[5] MSN,^[6] Time,^[7] ABC News^[8] and The Huffington Post.^[9]

Golden Corral's Response

On the same day, Golden Corral submitted a comment to Huber's YouTube video page, claiming that the food items shown in the video were not served to customers, that Huber's father attempted to sell the video for $5,000 and that the manager involved in the improper storage of the food had been fired.

Search Interest

External References