Burger King grilled for tweeting ‘Women belong in the kitchen’

© LOIC VENANCE People queue at the fast food chain in a Burger King in a shopping mall.

He should have run this one by the Burger Queen.

Fast good giant Burger King is taking heat for announcing a scholarship for female culinary students in the U.K. with an International Women’s Day tweet that reads “Women belong in the kitchen.”

While a pair of tweets following close behind explained that the Home of the Whopper was investing in training female employees to become chefs, critics on social media found the announcement half-baked.

“I won’t be eating at your store again thanks,” tweeted an unsatisfied female customer.

“Burger king f–k you” wrote a male Twitter user with 1.5 million followers.

Burger King followed its initial tweet with another explaining women belong in the kitchen “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women.”

The eatery said it is “on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry” and would do so by helping its workers go to culinary school.

“We are proud to be launching a new scholarship programme which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!” reads a third tweet in Burger King U.K.’s series.

It then deleted all the offensive tweets, and released a mea culpa missive.

“We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we’re sorry. Our aim was to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in UK kitchens are women and to help change that by awarding culinary scholarships. We will do better next time,” It wrote in the first one.

The company followed with a tweet saying it deleted the one that started the sizzling controversy because ”It was brought to our attention that there were abusive comments in the thread and we don’t want to leave the space open for that.:

Twitter user Michelle Guido tweeted at Burger King that she understands what their social media team was trying to do, but said it wasn’t well done.

“I get that you were using this comment as bait for a larger conversation to actually empower women. But listen to all the women telling you that using a sexist comment as bait isn’t cool,” she tweeted. “This was the first tweet I saw on international woman’s day.”

KFC Gaming, a Twitter feed operated by fast food chicken joint KFC, clucked at its competitor’s cluelessness.

“The best time to delete this post was immediately after posting it,” wrote KFC Gaming. “The second best time is now.”