She waited eight minutes, unwrapped her Whataburger, and the reaction said everything about what’s happened to this chain since Chicago bought it

A TikTok video from a Texas customer named Michele, known as @duchydoodle, is drawing renewed attention to longstanding quality complaints about Whataburger. As detailed by BroBible, she sat in her car after an eight-minute wait at an empty drive-thru, unwrapped her order, and found a patty that was thin, small, and irregularly shaped. “What the f— is this? Are you f—ing serious?” she asked in the clip, slapping the meat back onto the wrapper before tagging the chain in her caption with “Whata-way to end a s—ty day.”

The video quickly became a lightning rod. In the comments, customers shared their own grievances, with one person reporting only 13 French fries in their order and others describing similarly underwhelming patties. Some stated they had stopped visiting the chain entirely. “They used to be my favorite and I don’t even go there anymore they got so bad,” one commenter wrote.

The frustration extends well beyond a single video. On Reddit, users have debated for years whether Whataburger has declined since its 2019 sale to Chicago-based investment firm BDT Capital Partners, which ended nearly 70 years of Dobson family ownership. Many commenters attribute the perceived drop directly to that transition, describing the burgers as “worse by a significant margin” and blaming private equity for “ruining another good thing.”

The complaints aren’t uniform, and the company says nothing has changed

The experience varies sharply by location. Some customers vouch for specific spots, such as the Whataburger in LaGrange, Houston, while others say locations in Austin and Dallas no longer meet expectations. This regional inconsistency makes the situation difficult to assess. Michele’s video is not the only recent incident to gain traction. In March, another TikTok user reported finding a raw chicken tender in an order intended for her toddler, drawing over 10,000 views and adding fuel to the existing backlash. Consumer frustration with food brands has been particularly visible lately, including a Trader Joe’s caffeine mislabeling suit filed in California in April alleging customers were misled about what they were buying.

Amid wider public scrutiny over institutional accountability, including attention on an NYPD officer’s 547 school-zone tickets that the department declined to address, Whataburger is pressing forward with expansion plans. The chain currently operates in 17 states and has announced plans to open more than 40 additional locations across the Southeast. Ed Nelson, who served as CEO until recently, acknowledged publicly that he had read the Reddit comments and was aware of the service concerns. Whataburger’s official position remains that the food has not changed, attributing service problems in newer markets to training challenges rather than any shift in product quality.

Tracy Bess, operating manager of Whataburger’s flagship location in Corpus Christi, told the Washington Post that the declining-quality claims are inaccurate. “There are a lot of rumors out there, but nothing ever changed,” she said. “Our food was the same. As far as our product and the way we serve things, we never cut corners.”