Burger King Worker Wore Blackface at a Minnesota Drive-Thru on Halloween

On Halloween, a white employee at a Burger King in Faribault, Minnesota, worked the drive-thru window with her face covered in dark makeup. A Black customer filmed the encounter from her car and posted the video to Facebook the same day. By Sunday, the clip had spread across social platforms and drawn national backlash, and Burger King had issued its first response: a short statement saying the franchisee who runs the restaurant is addressing the situation.

Faribault is a city in Rice County, roughly 50 miles south of Minneapolis. The customer who recorded the video is from Minneapolis, according to Hollywood Unlocked, which was among the first outlets to report the incident. In the comments on her post, she identified the restaurant's location as Faribault and urged people to call the store and report the employee.

What the video shows

The clip runs under 30 seconds. It is filmed from inside a car at the drive-thru window; the customer stays off camera. On the other side of the window is the employee, wearing a Burger King cap and uniform shirt and a drive-thru headset, her face covered in opaque dark makeup from forehead to chin. Her hands and forearms are not painted.

The customer asks the employee to repeat what she had said earlier in their exchange. "I'm just Black today," the employee says. She then restates an earlier question and her answer to it: "You said, 'Did I think it was ok?' I said, 'As long as you have a good heart.'"

The customer then asks whether that means she supports Black Lives Matter. The employee pauses before answering: "Well, no. I just wanted to be Black."

The customer follows with the question that has anchored most of the coverage: "Why would you want to be Black? Do you know the struggles we go through as Black people?" The employee laughs, then corrects herself several times before landing on an answer: "No… yes I do. I mean, no. No, I don't. No, I don't." The video ends shortly afterward.

In her Facebook post, the customer wrote that Halloween costumes had gone too far and told the employee, in the caption, to wipe the makeup off. She shared a screenshot identifying the Burger King location and asked followers to call and report the employee.

How it spread

According to Hollywood Unlocked, viewers flooded the Faribault restaurant's Google listing with critical reviews after the video was posted, citing the employee's costume. By November 1, the clip had moved from Facebook to X, where the commentary account @SeeRacists reposted it and asked, "Should Burger King fire her?" Entertainment and culture outlets — among them The Nerd Stash, FreddyO.com and Unheard Voices Magazine — published accounts of the video over the weekend, and commentary channels on YouTube picked it up as well.

Calls for the employee to be fired were widespread in the reaction the outlets documented. "I need her fired EXPEDITIOUSLY," one commenter wrote, in a post quoted by The Nerd Stash. Others asked whether she had been fired or arrested. Coverage has also raised a question the video itself does not answer: the employee worked a public-facing shift at the window in full view of co-workers, and no reporting has established whether a manager saw the makeup and allowed her to keep working.

Burger King's response

Burger King provided a statement to KAAL-TV, the ABC affiliate that covers the Faribault area. "We are aware of the video and take the matter very seriously," the company said. "The Franchisee of this location is addressing the situation with his team, manager, and Team Member to ensure everyone involved understands why this is not acceptable and won't happen again."

The statement does not name the franchisee, does not describe any disciplinary action, and does not say whether the employee remains employed. As of Monday morning, no statement about the incident had appeared on Burger King's website or its social media accounts, according to the outlets covering the story.

What has not been confirmed

The employee has not been publicly named in any reporting Previously could verify, and she has not spoken publicly beyond the exchange in the video. Neither has the customer, beyond her original post.

Claims circulating on social media and on smaller websites that the employee has already been fired have not been confirmed by Burger King or the franchisee. FreddyO.com, one of the first outlets to cover the video, stated plainly that it had not confirmed the firing claims and would update its story when Burger King speaks. Other coverage has described the firing rumors as unverified. The only on-the-record account of the company's position remains the statement given to KAAL-TV, which says the situation is being addressed and does not announce an outcome.

No statement from the NAACP, from Faribault city officials, or from other local leaders had been reported as of Monday morning.

The history behind the reaction

Blackface — darkening the skin to portray a Black person — originates in American minstrel shows of the 19th century, in which white performers blackened their faces and performed exaggerated, demeaning caricatures of Black people. Minstrelsy became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States for much of that century, and blackface has been widely condemned as racist for generations, regardless of the wearer's stated intent.

Unheard Voices Magazine, covering the Faribault video, noted that its report does not attribute a motive or racial beliefs to the employee, and separates the documented exchange in the video from the historical commentary. The documented exchange is the part now in Burger King's hands: the employee's own explanation, recorded on camera, was that she "just wanted to be Black" for the day — followed by her acknowledgment that she does not know the struggles Black people go through.

What happens next

Burger King's statement commits the franchisee to addressing the situation with the store's team, manager and the employee involved, and says the purpose is to ensure "everyone involved understands why this is not acceptable and won't happen again." The company has not announced disciplinary action, a timeline, or any further public step. Previously will update this story if Burger King or the franchisee confirms the employee's status.