Nobody's perfect, and we all make mistakes... But these missteps by major food brands were on another level. The fallout was huge, leaving the brands with disgruntled customers and – in some cases – plummeting sales. Whether messing around with popular recipes, introducing bizarre new products or making baffling marketing decisions, these are the biggest ever mistakes made by food brands.
Click or scroll through our gallery to count down some of the worst errors made by food brands – how many do you remember?
We've based our ranking on the perceived damage done to each brand at the time and beyond, and on the opinions of our well-travelled (and well-fed) team. The list is unavoidably subjective.
All dollar amounts are USD, unless otherwise stated.
In 2009, Oprah Winfrey teamed up with KFC to offer her sizeable audience a voucher for a free grilled chicken meal from the fast food giant. The response to the one-day voucher was 'unprecedented and overwhelming', according to a KFC spokesperson. Chicken-hungry fans downloaded 10.5 million coupons, resulting in KFC handing over $42 million (£33m) of free chicken. There were also long lines and even longer turnaround times, forcing KFC to eventually shut the promotion down and instead introduce a raincheck offer.
In September 2024, Whole Foods announced it was changing the recipe for its Berry Chantilly cake – much to the chagrin of its loyal customers. Fans of the cult cake saw the company's plan as effectively replacing the fresh berries in the dessert with a layer of jam, which would presumably be easier and cheaper to make, sell and preserve. The cake's fanbase came out in force and within two weeks, the Berry Chantilly cake was restored to its former glory. “Customer feedback was clear,” said Whole Foods.
In 2017, the Museum of Failure featured a product called Colgate Beef Lasagna in its exhibition, claiming the toothpaste brand tried and failed to break into the frozen food market in the 1980s. However, the real story is slightly more complicated. The Colgate Beef Lasagna packaging (pictured here) was a mock-up created by the museum using 'a good measure of artistic freedom', so this specific product never actually existed. But, according to further reporting by Prospect magazine, Colgate really did dip its toes into the frozen meals market with a line of chicken and crabmeat dinners it briefly test-marketed in the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, it went no further.
Kellogg’s chocolatey puffed rice cereal has many different names around the world, though most are similar to the US branding: Cocoa Krispies. In the UK, however, they've always been known as Coco Pops. Well, almost always. To bring the UK in line with the rest of the world, Kellogg's rebranded the cereal as Choco Krispies in 1998. A small tweak, some might think, but sales plummeted and, in a survey of one million people, 92% of respondents said they wanted the name Coco Pops back. Kellogg’s relented, and in February 1999 the old name returned – with huge fanfare.
Red Bull might be the king of energy drinks, but it was humbled in 2007 when it tried to break into the cola market. Despite its best efforts, including prominent advertising with both of its Formula 1 teams, the product never broke the Pepsi/Coke monopoly. This might be because consumers assumed it would be highly caffeinated while, in reality, the product had no more caffeine than other colas. It was withdrawn from the US in 2011 and only exists as a niche product in limited global markets.
US chain Long John Silver's may have thought it was on to a winner in May 2013 with the launch of the Big Catch. This platter included a large haddock, onion rings and hush puppies – all battered and deep fried for extra crispiness. But just two months later, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) called it the ‘worst restaurant meal in America’. The CSPI's issue was that the Big Catch contained almost 1.2oz (33g) of trans fats – an incredible 15 times the maximum daily intake recommended by the World Health Organisation. Long John Silver’s returned the Big Catch from whence it came shortly afterwards.
A glass of orange juice with breakfast is a pretty normal way to start the day. However, in 1985 Kellogg’s took this idea a step too far when it introduced its throat-curdling OJ's cereal. The brand promised the cereal contained all the vitamin C found in an average serving of fresh orange juice and had a sweet coating that included 10% real orange juice. Within a year, though, OJ's were off shelves completely. Consumers had decided that they very much wanted their morning milk and orange separate.
The only misstep popular burger joint Shake Shack can really be accused of taking came in 2013 when former CEO Randy Garutti forced the chain to try using fresh fries instead of frozen ones. The decision was strange in hindsight considering Shake Shack's frozen crinkle-cut fries were already bestsellers, but Garutti had it in his head that Shake Shack's fresh-is-best ethos should apply to the whole menu. However, sales of the new fresh fries plummeted after the change, and fans demanded a return of the crinkles. They got their wish six months later.
Arnott’s once claimed that it sold 53 million boxes of its Shapes hexagonal biscuits each year in Australia alone. That's an average of two boxes for every Australian in the country! So, when Arnott's made a fundamental change to the Pizza flavour of Shapes in 2016, fans were outraged. Rather than using seasoning powder, Arnott's started baking flavours directly into the biscuits. However, after a huge customer backlash, the decision was reversed within six months. "Aussies have clearly shown us the love they have for Original Pizza Shapes," the company admitted.
British supermarket chain Iceland focuses on providing a wide range of lower-cost frozen food. In 1997, though, it made a major misstep when it launched Wacky Veg. These were frozen vegetables flavoured to taste like other things, including chocolate-flavoured carrots, pizza sweetcorn and peas imbued with the taste of baked beans. They were universally unpopular, with most kids preferring the taste of real vegetables. The idea was dropped after just a year.
Canadian-made Orbitz was unlike any soda seen before or since. Rather than mix the flavouring in with the water base, Orbitz had brightly coloured balls of flavour floating in a sugar water suspension. The idea was that, when drunk, the balls would give an intense burst of flavour in the mouth. Unfortunately, confused customers compared the drink to a lava lamp, and Orbitz was taken off shelves a year after launch.
While many brands strive for mass appeal, Nestlé went in another direction when it launched a UK advertising campaign for the Yorkie chocolate bar in 2002. The provocative 'Not for girls!' campaign proclaimed that these big, chunky bars were for men only. At the time, a Nestlé marketing director said the adverts were a purposeful answer to the "feminine silks and swirls and indulgent images of most confectionery advertising". But not everybody agreed...
The advertising received complaints of sexism (and still does whenever people rediscover it online), but Nestlé stuck with it until 2011. Other parts of the campaign included handing out free samples to men only and introducing a pink-wrapped bar in 2006 that women were 'permitted' to eat. But despite the divisive commercials, Yorkie was propelled into the national conversation and sales reportedly went up – especially amongst 'rebellious' women.
Tropicana's orange juice is arguably the most famous in the world, with its easily recognisable branding featuring an orange pierced with a straw. However, in 2009, the company spent $35 million (around £28m) on a rebrand, updating the traditional design to a more modern and minimalist one. Consumers, though, did not adore the new aesthetic, and the company lost $30 million (£24m) in sales in the first two months alone. This steered an immediate U-turn, with the classic branding quickly reinstated.
Burger King launched Satisfries in September 2013 after spending an entire decade developing the recipe that brought these crinkle-cut fries in with 20% fewer calories than those offered by McDonald’s. The chain hailed it as ‘one of the biggest fast food launches’ in history and was probably anticipating an incredible response from consumers. Alas, Burger King fans largely stayed away from the 'healthier' fries, and Satisfries were barely in circulation for a year.
Milo has been a popular fortified chocolate malt drink in New Zealand and beyond since its 1934 launch, so it's somewhat baffling that Nestlé decided to start fiddling with the recipe. In 2015, the company altered the added vitamins and minerals in the tonic powder, but the only difference customers noticed was a decidedly less chocolatey taste. Fans in New Zealand complained so much that in 2019 Nestlé finally gave in and returned Milo to the original recipe. The new product was called Milo Classic NZ Taste.
US condiment giant Heinz spent eight years perfecting a salad cream recipe for the British market, and launched its Heinz Salad Cream in 1914 to great success. However, after 80 years of decent support, Heinz considered discontinuing the products in the 1990s. When Brits heard about the plan, though, there was enough uproar to convince the company to keep the product on shelves – and launch a massive advertising campaign to revitalise sales. But the salad cream boom didn't last long, and in 2018, Heinz tried to change its Salad Cream once more.
In June 2018, Heinz announced it would rename Salad Cream as Sandwich Cream. The decision was made after research showed only 14% of customers actually used the product on salads, with most instead using it as a mayonnaise alternative in sandwich spreads. Again, though, the public rebelled. In a Heinz survey, 87% of customers voted to keep the name as it was. Thankfully, peace was restored that September, when Heinz backed down and gave up on the rebrand.
The early 1990s trend for healthier products propelled Pepsi to introduce Crystal Pepsi, or Pepsi Clear. The product was meant to have the same taste as regular Pepsi but without the caramel colouring or caffeine content. Despite initial strong sales after a 1992 launch, Crystal Pepsi Clear failed to achieve long-term success as the appetite for the colourless soda quickly diminished. Coca-Cola's former chief marketing officer Sergio Zyman claimed his company intentionally launched the born-to-die Tab Clear at the same to kill off Crystal Pepsi. The product was discontinued in 1994.
But in 2014, 20 years after Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, fan pressure began to build for its return to shelves. There was even a petition signed by more than 30,000 people and billboards erected in Los Angeles. The plan worked, and in 2016 Pepsi Clear returned to shelves in the US and Canada for a limited run. The product has returned twice more, in 2018 and 2022, and the continued popularity means fans can expect to see Pepsi Clear in fridges again someday soon.
In 2018, hugely popular adult animated series Rick and Morty included a joke about Rick making a stop at McDonald’s while exploring his memories. The reason, he explained, was so that he could taste a very special McDonald’s dipping sauce: Szechuan. It had been created as a promotional tie-in for Disney’s 1998 film Mulan, and discontinued soon after. However, after the sauce was mentioned on the show, McDonald’s decided to bring Szechuan back for a single day in the US. The result was utter chaos...
With very limited supplies available, fans disrupted business as they rowdily queued for hours to try it. Police were called to some locations to break up near riots, while some of those who were able to get their hands on the Szechuan sauce tried to sell them online for hundreds of dollars. McDonald’s quickly made more available, a move that somewhat reduced the surrounding fervour – but it’s hard to see how the disruption was worth it.
‘Shrinkflation’ refers to when a product’s price remains the same, but its size is reduced. Toblerone offered one of the most famous examples of this in 2016, when the brand removed two chocolate chunks from its UK and German bars, adding bigger gaps (or valleys) between the iconic chocolate peaks. It took almost two years of complaints before Toblerone's owner, Mondelez International, returned the bar to its original shape – but in a bigger, more expensive size.
This wasn't the end of the chocolate brand's problems, though. In early 2023, Mondelez announced it was moving part of Toblerone's production to Slovakia – and was consequently forced to change its packaging to remove any indicators of Swiss identity. This is due to regulations on 'Swissness' introduced in 2017, designed to ensure that products that market themselves as Swiss are actually made in Switzerland. The bars' famous image of the Matterhorn mountain peak was replaced by one of a more generic summit.
In 2000, Heinz tried to make its ketchup more appealing to children by introducing EZ Squirt varieties in the US. This line saw green, purple and blue-coloured ketchup appear alongside the classic red, encouraging children to creatively paint it on their food (and pressure parents to buy multiple bottles). Initially, the release of EZ Squirt was a huge success, hitting its projected first-year sales in just three months. However, the brand soon ran into trouble.
While EZ Squirt ketchup never lost popularity with kids and is still a fond memory for people who grew up with it, parents eventually turned on it. The early 2000s saw concerns mount about how artificial colourings affected children, possibly putting many parents off the idea of multi-coloured ketchup. Heinz introduced a ‘mystery’ colour in an attempt to bring some excitement back to EZ Squirt, but the product was eventually discontinued in 2006.
In October 2015, Burger King released the Halloween Whopper with a seasonally appropriate black bun. But the Halloween treat turned into a trick once some customers reported that the burger bun had turned their stool a vibrant shade of green. Experts later revealed that the food colouring used in the bun couldn't be properly absorbed during digestion, resulting in, well, a troubling bathroom break. Unsurprisingly, the burger bun hasn’t been seen on the menu since.
Has there ever been a more public failure than New Coke? In 1985, Coca-Cola changed its recipe to fend off new pretenders to the soft drink crown. However, the wider public hated the new taste – and sales nosedived. Within three months, the original recipe returned, rebranded Coca-Cola Classic to distinguish it from the disastrous experiment (the 'Classic' was dropped in 2009). The company was rewarded with a huge sales boost – so huge, in fact, that some now theorise New Coke was simply a marketing gimmick. Amazingly, though, New Coke survived as Coke II until 2002.
WOW Chips, released by Frito-Lays in the US, are perhaps the ultimate example of ‘if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is’. These potato chips were fat-free, and the marketing played up how they had far fewer calories than regular crisps. After their 1998 release, WOW Chips were a hit – but things took a swift downturn once consumers realised they contained a fat substitute food additive called Olestra.
It turned out Olestra caused some consumers to suffer from sudden and unpleasant stomach issues, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eventually forced Lays to put a warning on the packaging. The warning read, in part: "This product contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools." By 2000, sales of WOW Chips had halved, although they stayed on shelves as Lays Light until 2016, when they were finally discontinued.
The Arch Deluxe was supposed to be McDonald’s crowning glory. Research suggested that customers wanted more grown-up menu items, and the company listened. In 1996, the Arch Deluxe was the lead product in a new range of adult-oriented menu items, and McDonald’s spent $300 million (around £240m) developing and marketing its new star burger. It was initially launched in Canada as a 'Taste of the Month' burger, before rolling out elsewhere. However, despite promising results from test markets, the Arch Deluxe flopped. Diners were put off by the bigger size and higher price compared to the rest of the McDonald’s range.
While the Arch Deluxe was finally discontinued in 2000, its legacy still lives on. It has a much more popular spiritual successor, known as the Big Tasty in the UK and the Big N’ Tasty elsewhere. McDonald's hasn't been able to let go of the 'Arch' name, either, because in 2024 it introduced fans around the world to the Big Arch (pictured). Perhaps this new burger will end up doing everything the Arch Deluxe was supposed to do.
In 2018, nearly 700 of KFC’s 900 UK outlets had to close their doors after the chain ran out of – wait for it – chicken. KFC had just changed suppliers from Bidvest to DHL when DHL suffered catastrophic ‘operational issues’ that left KFC outlets without any chicken. This naturally ruffled fans' feathers, and KFC had to deal with days of bad press. Eventually, though, KFC got its stores reopened inside of a week and apologised to its customers. “A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It’s not ideal,” the chain quipped.
During the 1984 Olympic Games, McDonald's promised customers with matching event cards that they would get free Big Macs, fries or drinks every time the USA team won gold, silver or bronze medals. It should have been a solid promotion... until the Russian Olympic team dropped out of the Games. The US then recorded an unprecedented 174 medals, 83 of which were gold. That resulted in McDonald’s restaurants giving away untold amounts of free food and eventually running low on Big Macs. The New York Times newspaper called the cost of the promotion ‘mind-boggling’.
Now discover the iconic fast food restaurants that we wish hadn't closed
Last updated by Luke Paton.