On June 19, Black people across the country celebrated Juneteenth, when slaves in Texas received the news of the Emancipation Proclamation two years after nearly everyone else in 1865. But while shopping for food to share with family and friends to commemorate the occasion, one TikTok user was downright offended by the selection she found in her local grocery store.
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User @blaq.monalisa shared a video she took inside an Atlanta Kroger grocery store, which revealed what she thought was a "bulls*t" collection of Juneteenth cookie cakes. The cakes, tagged with slogans like "Free @ Last" and "June 19 Free," were sloppily designed, according to many viewers, as they said it looked more like they were decorated by third graders than professional bakers.
"I wish it was a manager here," she said while walking through the "Kroger on Howell mill rd" store's bakery section. "'Cause y'all decorate everything else around here cute, but for Juneteenth you wanna just throw something on a freakin' cookie cake and expect someone to buy it?"
Her post, captioned, "Kroger count your days. Why even bother if you're going to lack creativity. ... This is a mockery," has since received over 10 million views and thousands of comments from people who refused to buy what Kroger was selling. Some couldn't help but compare the situation to Walmart's 2022 Juneteenth's controversy. The big box store issued an apology after receiving online backlash for releasing their perceived tone-deaf version of red velvet ice cream branded “Celebration Edition: Juneteenth Ice Cream” rather than encouraging shoppers to support Black-owned brands.
"So no one learned from the Walmart Juneteenth ice cream incident?" asked someone in the comments.
Another commenter suggested the shopper take out her frustration on the pitiful in-store display.
"Clean up on aisle 10 after I accidentally knocked them all to the floor," wrote another commenter.
One person suggested the shopper take the words on the cake literally and take the "free" cake out of the store without paying.
"Free means you don't pay sis, grab it and run!" wrote someone else.
It looks like putting the store on blast worked, as @blaqmonalisa went back to the store the next day and updated her followers that the store removed the Juneteenth cakes in favor of more generic red, white, and blue cupcakes, brownies, and Rice Krispy Treats.
"I still feel some type of way that they didn't replace them with better Juneteenth cakes," she said.
"Kroger acted swiftly," wrote someone in the comments. "They were like, hell naw, I see how y'all did Target!"
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