Buffalo Wild Wings advertised free meals for veterans, but this woman reveals the cruel fine print they didn’t mention

A lot of restaurants give free meals to veterans on Veterans Day to say thank you for their service. Buffalo Wild Wings was one of the chains that said they’d give veterans a free meal this year. But one homeless veteran found out the promotion had rules that made it impossible for her to get the meal.

Brookes is a homeless veteran who posts videos online about her life. She made a TikTok video calling out Buffalo Wild Wings after she tried to get the free Veterans Day meal they advertised. More than 162,000 people have watched her video where she talks about what happened, as per Bro Bible.

“You should take it off of your website if you can’t actually walk in and order the free Veterans Day meal like you say that you can,” Brookes said in her video. She said the promotion only worked if you ate inside the restaurant, and the website didn’t make that clear.

The rules made it impossible for some veterans to participate

Brookes said the dine-in rule was a big problem for her. “You actually only are allowed to eat in the restaurant, which I would if I could, but I’m homeless, and my animals and things like that can’t exactly come with me,” she said in the video.

Her GoFundMe page says she and her boyfriend moved from California to Michigan because he got a job there. But he lost that job about a month after they moved. Now they’re homeless and living off her veteran’s disability payments, which come out to just over $2,000 every month.

What bothered Brookes wasn’t just missing out on the meal. She also spent money on gas to drive there, money she really couldn’t afford to lose. “That would have been nice to know before I wasted my gas,” she said. She thinks Buffalo Wild Wings needs to be more honest about the rules on their website.

Buffalo Wild Wings said all veterans could get 10 free Boneless Wings and Fries if they showed their ID on Veterans Day. But you could only get it if you ate inside the restaurant at locations that were part of the deal. A lot of other big restaurant chains do the same thing with their Veterans Day deals, making people eat inside to get the free food.

There are still a lot of homeless veterans in the United States. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says about 32,882 veterans didn’t have homes on one night in January 2024. That’s the smallest number since the government started keeping track in 2009, but it’s still thousands of people who fought for the country.

Homeless veterans face real challenges when trying to use services like this. Some have pets or service animals they can’t leave alone outside. Others have stuff they need to keep safe. Some just don’t feel okay being in certain places for a long time. When restaurants don’t tell people upfront about their rules, veterans end up spending money on gas to drive somewhere only to find out they can’t get what was promised.