Scandals That Buffalo Wild Wings Can Never Live Down

Buffalo Wild Wings has been a haven for sports lover and chicken wing enthusiasts since its inception in 1982. It started as a strip mall wing joint, then called Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck, in Columbus, Ohio — its two founders being some guys from New York who missed New York (specifically Buffalo)-style hot wings. It's since grown so big, it hosts a location in every state, and other countries all over the world. Sports fans across the world even gather at B-Dubs to watch their favorite teams play on one of the gazillion flat screen TVs the chain proudly mounts in each restaurant.

But the growth and success of Buffalo Wild Wings hasn't come without a side of drama. The wings can be spicy, and so can the headlines, so we've recapped the biggest scandals in BWW history, and weigh in on whether the country's most famous chicken 'n ranch slinger will ever fully recover.

Don't you dare mess with your U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission updates, or so says the fancy hedge fund firm Marcato Capital Management. In 2017, Buffalo Wild Wings apparently led investors astray in its report about company shares. While B-Dubs claimed to have outperformed the S&P Restaurant Index, Marcato snapped back that, over the course of the previous five-year period, the company had actually underperformed by over 60 percent. 

Mick Mcguire, the managing partner of Marcato, had this to say about the BWW proxy materials at the time of the material filing: "This kind of sloppy, self-serving 'analysis,' which has gone uncorrected for three full days, including a trading day, is emblematic of what we believe is management's careless approach to assessment of shareholder value. This is an astronomical error and the fact that we need to point it out should make all shareholders question many arguments management has put forth." Ouch. Since Marcato owned 6.1 percent of the chain's stock at the time, this was a bit of a low blow, but likely warranted. And Marcato clearly had some foresight since in 2019, it continued to see its investment suffer through lackluster sales.

In 2019, a former Buffalo Wild Wings cook sued the company (and its parent company, Inspire Brands) for alleged discrimination based on race, age, and disability. The cook, Gary Lovelace, a black man in his 50s, filed the suit after being fired for reporting what he dubbed a "a racially hostile work environment."

Lovelace claims he was mistreated by management, who continuously made "derogatory comments" about his race and African Americans in general, as well as his age, while insisting he perform tasks outside his job description. Lovelace also purports that the management essentially condoned the behavior of servers who refused to wait on black patrons, saying they did not tip as well. At one point, Lovelace was regularly late to his shift due to caring for a sick family member and told to call in sick when he was going to be late, which he alleges was not the same protocol for his younger coworkers.

The lawsuit is still ongoing but a lot of the details of mistreatment described by the plaintiff are very unsettling and certainly not a good look for Buffalo Wild Wings at large.

Okay, if Buffalo Wild Wings can live this one down, they are truly a miracle worker disguised as a chicken chain. In June of 2019, a woman was watching Women's World Cup soccer at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Los Angeles, California when (we can't even believe we're writing this), a live rat fell from the ceiling smack onto the menu on her table. Alisha Norman, the customer who had to undergo this trauma, was visiting from Texas and told NBC 4 News, "I knew the rat was going to be injured because it hit like a Mack truck." She also reported that a manager came over and, "...took two plates and then they just picked it up and dumped it in a bag...it was terrible. It was disgusting." Yep, that definitely tracks as to how we'd respond to an animal landing atop our table.

A rep from Buffalo Wild Wings claimed the incident was due to construction happening at this particular restaurant's location and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed that BWW followed all the necessary protocols when it closed after the rat dropping (pun intended) to make sure there was not another "imminent health hazard" pending. 

Yes, we'll take a basket of boneless wings with a side of live rodent, please?

At the end of 2019, a really disturbing occurrence put a Naperville, Illinois Buffalo Wild Wings in the spotlight. A diner allegedly asked someone on the BWW staff if a group of multiracial customers could be moved to a different location than their reserved table in the restaurant because the diner supposedly, "did not want to sit by black people," according to ABC 7 News. The group was coming from a day of kids' basketball games, and was just trying to enjoy some hot wings, without a side of straight-up racism.

Not only has the customer in question been 86'd from all Buffalo Wild Wings locations, but the employees (a manager and supervisor) who granted the racist request were fired. One of the people who were with the group that was asked to move reported that the BWW workers even went so far as to then sit with the customer and seemingly to commiserate with him about his racist request. Buffalo Wild Wings supposedly instigated diversity and sensitivity training for all its Chicago outposts after the incident. Still, it doesn't reflect well at all on the company for having employees behave this way in the first place.

If you're a die-hard BWW fan, you might want to skip this one — it could forever tarnish your view of the boneless wing and football-viewing haven. According to the Miami Herald, a West Palm Beach Buffalo Wild Wings failed its health inspection by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation in a pretty intense way in March of 2020. The inspection reportedly listed a whopping 51 flies in the restaurant's kitchen, 12 of which were spotted "landing on clean utensils hanging on the wall in the dishwasher room located in the kitchen." You're definitely gonna need a beer (or several) to wash down that unsavory amount of yuck.

The inspectors also slapped the Buffalo Wild Wings location with a "Stop Sales" because some condiments/toppings, namely cheese, lettuce, salsa, tomatoes, and lettuce, were "unsafely warm." Yikes! The only thing we want too hot at Buffalo Wild Wings is our basket of chicken, thank you very much.