‘A mockery’: Atlanta Kroger’s Juneteenth cakes in viral video spark backlash

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – An Atlanta Kroger is drawing backlash over its Juneteenth cakes.

A viral TikTok video posted by blaq.monalisa on the eve of the holiday – which commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. – shows several cookie cakes in the store on Howell Mill Road decorated with off-center text.

The cakes had “Free @ last” and “June 19 free” written on them. Others simply said “Free” and “Congratulations.”

“Why even bother if you’re going to lack creativity… This is a mockery!” the TikTok user wrote in the description for the video, which has nearly 11 million views and 41,000 comments as of Friday morning.

“I wish it was a manager here, because y’all decorate everything else around here cute,” she said while browsing the cakes. “Everything else around here cute, but for Juneteenth, you want to just throw something on a freaking cookie cake and expect someone to buy it?”

She said she’d return to the store the next day to talk to someone.

NOTE: The following video contains profanity.

A video of her return visit posted on Juneteenth shows the cakes had been cleared from the table.

“TikTok, y’all did it. I don’t know what you did, but you did it, because I know ain’t nobody buy those cookies, and they gone,” she said in the video. “I still feel some type of way that they didn’t replace it with better Juneteenth cakes.”

A spokesperson for Kroger said the cakes did not meet the grocery chain’s standards, and that the company has addressed the issue with store employees and reached out to blaq.monalisa.

The company provided the following statement to Atlanta News First:

“The cakes and cookies that were featured in the video were inconsistent with our provided guidance and not of the quality we would expect to see from our stores. The products have been removed, and we’ve addressed this directly with the store teams and the customer who took the initial video.”

Atlanta News First reached out to blaq.monalisa for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Juneteenth celebrations across the US commemorate the end of slavery