Colorado Woman Orders 30-Count Box Of Chick-fil-A Nuggets. Then She Decides To Open The Box—And Count

It took a while, but fast-food restaurants have finally realized that the normal 6- or 8-packs of nuggets aren’t enough.

Now, many of the country’s biggest fast-food chains will sell you 20, 30, or even 50 nuggets at once. For example, one can enter a McDonald’s, KFC, or Wendy’s location and get a 50-piece nugget box—allowing you to enjoy around 2,000 calories of chicken-y, oily goodness in one sitting.

One might wonder, in the fast-paced environment that is a fast food restaurant, how employees are managing to count out 50 nuggets for each order. If a recent TikTok video is to be believed, they’re not—and it’s resulting in customers getting ripped off.

What’s Missing From This Chick-Fil-A Order?

In a video with over 354,000 views, TikTok user Emma (@bettywhitelover) shows off a 30-piece box of nuggets that she purchased from Chick-fil-A.

According to Emma, she saw a video of KFC only putting 35 pieces of popcorn chicken into a 50-piece bucket. Consequently, she decided to test whether Chick-fil-A was accurate in their count.

“Today, me and my girlfriend got a 30-count Chick-fil-A nugget, and we’re gonna see if they actually did 30,” she explains. “Let’s begin.”

Emma then proceeds to count. As the count increases, she seems to get more agitated. Eventually, she reaches the final nugget—putting the total count at just 27, three nuggets short of what she ordered.

“You f—– liars! And this—I’m not gonna count as a chicken nugget,” she adds, holding up a small nugget. “Do f—- better! That’s a three-count difference. I’m p—-.”

In the caption, she adds, “I ORDERED 30 NOT 27.”

How Does Chick-fil-A Count Their Nuggets?

Seeing this, one may wonder how such a mistake is even possible. Does Chick-fil-A not count their nuggets before giving them to a customer?

It appears that they’re supposed to. One training manual found online stresses that checking whether “there are [the] correct number of Nuggets in box” is an essential “quality checkpoint.” In a discussion on Reddit, users insisted that employees are supposed to manually count each box of nuggets. In fact, some say that they can be disciplined for incorrect counts.

“At my store they do random/daily checks of the nugget chutes and count how many are in our boxes to be sure the person on ‘secondary’ (aka where we hold our nuggets, Mac, and grilled nuggets) is counting properly,” a user wrote. “At my store you can receive a write up for miscounts.”

It seems that this system does a fairly good job of ensuring that customers get the correct number of nuggets. While there are some complaints online about nugget size, few complain about being underserved nuggets. Plus, for all those who do complain about getting fewer nuggets than they ordered, there are some who say that they received more nuggets than they paid for.

So, what happened in Emma’s situation? One can only speculate. But if she’s telling the truth and accurately counted the nuggets, it’s clear she was short-changed. As a result, she can submit a complaint to Chick-fil-A, though it’s uncertain how the company will respond.

Diners Are Devastated

In the comments section, users expressed their anger at Chick-fil-A.

“If you were $.10 short, you would not get your chicken nuggets. I think we need to start suing these companies for a false advertising,” a user declared.

“So they can rob us but we can’t rob them,” another offered.

“That’s a 10% difference,” noted a third. “At $17.35 for 30, they owe you back $1.74.”

That said, some claimed that their Chick-fil-A location would not allow such a mistake.

“Idk but at my Cfa they’re really strict on if we’re actually counting to 30 or not,” a user stated. “I think every location is different since it’s operated locally.”

“The 30 rack of nuggies!!!!!! Anytime I pick them up, my husband has to count the nuggets to make sure we got all 30 (we almost always have extra),” observed a second.

UPDATE: In an email, Emma stated that she did not reach out to the restaurant after the incident, nor has Chick-fil-A contacted her.

“I definitely think getting a voucher for free nuggets would be a good option — I could easily get one if I reached out, but their nuggets don’t even taste that good and after this… idk if I want them again lol,” she wrote. “I also think this brings up a way bigger issue on false advertising with major fast food companies and that needs to be addressed!”

She added that she’s received miscounted nuggets “numerous times,” claiming that quality and consistency “went downhill, MAJORLY” after 2021.

“How many companies are false advertising and getting away with it?” she asked in conclusion. “This opened my eyes to a whole new world!”

BroBible reached out to Chick-fil-A via email.