Miriam Webb, known as “MiritheSiren” on TikTok, was working two jobs and 12-hour days before her Chick-fil-A videos blew up online.
When Miriam Webb first shared her Chick-fil-A employee lunch online in December, she didn’t think anyone would notice.
“I was going through a weird little breakup at the time that I started making these videos. I usually would call this person on my lunch break and couldn’t call them anymore. So I was like, ‘Okay, well fine. I’m going to make TikToks.’ I wanted to distract myself,” the St. Louis native known as “MiritheSiren” on TikTok tells PEOPLE.
In April 2023, the 22-year-old started working at her local Chick-fil-A in California during a transitional time in her life. She had just lost her job as an executive assistant to a Harvard professor and was “feeling kind of depressed.”
But she went into the fast food spot with enthusiasm and positivity, telling the manager, “If you hire me, I’ll be a star. I promise I’ll come in here and I’ll do whatever I can and just be the happiest, best person I can be.”
And she did just that. Looking at the online reviews for her Chick-fil-A location, one can find compliments about the employee, calling her a “rockstar” and remarking on her “best energy.”
“The connections that I built, not with just the people in my store, but specifically that community surrounding Chick-fil-A,” she says. “There are a lot of high schools around there. I went to three of those kids’ graduation parties. I am very, very connected in that community.”
Several months in as an employee, Webb, who worked 12-hour days at Chick-fil-A and a second job at Aldi, began sharing her employee meals with followers online on Dec. 9.
From the start, Webb’s casual and inviting personality shined through her lunchtime hauls. While sitting in the break room of the restaurant in her uniform, she would share exactly what was eating for her comped meal, talking to viewers like they were her friends.
Within a month, her videos grew from a few thousand likes to hundreds of thousands of likes. Her content changed as her followers grew. In addition to her employee meals, Webb shared secret menu hacks, like combining sweet tea and vanilla creamer to create milk tea, and her opinions of new menu items.
She didn’t purposefully keep her videos – many of which have millions of views – a secret but it wasn’t until her April 8 TikTok reviewing the new Cherry Berry drinks blew up that Chick-fil-A took notice of her clips.
According to Webb, it was a news outlet that broke the news to Chick-fil-A about her viral videos. “[The outlet] reached out to Chick-fil-A about it for comment. They were like, ‘Hey, how do you feel about your worker making these videos?’ And Chick-fil-A was like, ‘No comment, but who are you talking about?’” she recounted.
Webb explains that she was not in trouble but that she was told she could not post her videos in uniform nor in the restaurant. She says they told her that she could take her employee meal home to record the videos there, but Webb thought that would diminish the honesty of her clips.
“Those videos were all posted in real time,” she explains. “It’s not that I was against that idea, but that felt like there was an authenticity of me being at work.”
On April 15, she announced that she will no longer make Chick-fil-A content in a TikTok video. Webb wrote in the caption that “Chick-fil-A Corporate has asked me to stop making content. I’m sorry you guys :/ Thank you for all the support and love but an era has ended.”
Fans rallied around her in the comment section. Influencer James Charles commented his support of Webb, writing, “What a HUGE missed opportunity for them but you handled this with so much class.”
One day later, Webb says her DMs were flooded with messages from brands asking her to work with them but Shake Shack’s message stood out the most to her.
“Shake Shack’s owner is from St. Louis, and I’m originally from St. Louis. I’ve always loved Shake Shack and eating at Shake Shack was always like eating at home for me,” she explains.
By April 21, the TikToker had parted ways with Chick-fil-A and posted a sponsored video eating Shake Shack that “skyrocketed.” Now, she and the burger chain have a long-term partnership in the works and she has posted sponsored videos with El Pollo Loco and Zaxby’s.
The opportunities are mind-blowing to Webb, who now focuses entirely on social media. “I kept telling my mom, ‘Please pinch me. Is this actually happening? What’s happening left and right?’” she laughs.
For Webb, there is no love lost with Chick-fil-A. “I’m still very proud of my job at Chick-fil-A,” she says.
Plus, the time at Chick-fil-A prepared her for some of the responses she gets online.
“I think my year at Chick-fil-A was a year of PR training. You do a lot of heart-searching at Chick-fil-A because you got to be nice to everybody,” she explains. “Don’t matter if they yell at you, scream at you, whatever it may be, you have to keep your composure. When I see mean comments, I’m like, ‘Could respond or could say, I love you, have a good day.’ And that’s what I do.”
