Former Bing chief Mikhail Parakhin appeared to subtly criticize Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.
Parakhin wrote it's "hard to disagree" when an X user said "we need you."
The comment was in response to a post quoting Suleyman's recent TED Talk that was blasted by VCs.
Microsoft's former Bing chief appears to have thrown shade at Mustafa Suleyman.
Mikhail Parakhin, who stepped down from his role just days after Suleyman became CEO of Microsoft AI, commented under an X post about the DeepMind cofounder.
An X user wrote "We need you ngl" (short for "not gonna lie") under a post summarizing Suleyman's TED Talk last week, which some critics have been ripping into.
Parakhin responded in a comment that looked like a low-key dig at Suleyman: "Hard to disagree :-)."
Some venture capitalists have been taking aim on X at Suleyman's AI remarks in his TED Talk.
Martin Casado, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz's firm a16z, said: "Good god. Make it stop. Total fucking nonsense."
John Chu, a VC firm Khosla Ventures partner, wrote: "This is what happens when you hire the business cofounder who doesn't really understand the tech."
Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington also chimed in: "When you give a midwit a platform."
Microsoft executive vice-president Rajesh Jha announced in an internal memo last month obtained by The Verge that Parakhin had "decided to explore new roles."
Parakhin would have reported to Suleyman after Satya Nadella's reshuffle in which he was tapped to lead its consumer AI products and research including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.
Parakhin, who led the company's Bing search engine and advertising businesses, will now report to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott instead.
Suleyman's first big move at Microsoft was announcing an AI hub in London. He cofounded Inflection AI firm in 2022 alongside Karén Simonyan and "Paypal mafia" member Reid Hoffman. Before that he cofounded DeepMind in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Tesla has reportedly been considering building a new factory in India, the world's third-largest car market.
MG Motor India executive Rajeev Chaba told CNBC the move could boost India's EV market.
Only a fraction of vehicles sold in India are electric, but that could be about to change.
Tesla has been eyeing an expansion into India — and one local auto executive thinks it'll be good for business.
MG Motor India's CEO Emeritus Rajeev Chaba told CNBC that Tesla's potential entry into the Indian market could help boost the country's low rate of EV adoption.
"Tesla is really welcome. It'll be good for the industry, good news for the country, and for serious players like us," Chaba told CNBC.
MG Motor currently sells two types of EVs in India; it recently announced a joint venture with JSW Group to roll out more EVs in India and capture a larger slice of the market.
"I wish more and more players come, with more and more choices. Because that will give the consumer a chance to look at the various options and go for it," he added.
The auto exec told CNBC that a lack of competition was hampering India's EV industry.
The Indian government has set a target of 30% of all vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. Between October 2022 and September 2023, EVs accounted for around 5% of total vehicle sales, according to data from Bain and Company.
"Competition is limited at this point of time. Numbers are still constrained because consumers don't have compelling choices," Chaba said.
Foreign EV companies have previously been deterred from entering the world's third-largest vehicle market because of high import taxes on electric cars.
However, a new policy that provides an exception for automakers who invest at least $500 million to produce their cars in the country and who set up manufacturing facilities within the next three years — suggests that may be about to change.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla is planning to build a new factory in the country as part of a $2 to $3 billion investment, and CEO Elon Musk was due to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week to announce the move.
US consumer finances are solid but economic and geopolitical risks are looming, Jamie Dimon said.
The JPMorgan CEO warned sticky inflation, more interest-rate hikes, and a recession remain threats.
The world order is being challenged, and crypto's done little despite a decade of hype, Dimon said.
Most people are financially healthy, but economic and geopolitical threats could spoil the party, Jamie Dimon warned on Tuesday.
Consumers have seen their homes and stock portfolios surge in value in recent years, and they're spending a historically low percentage of their incomes on debt repayments, the JPMorgan CEO told the Economic Club of New York.
People are also benefiting from strong economic growth and near-record employment, but they won't be immune if disaster strikes, Dimon said.
"Even if we go into recession, the consumer's in good shape," he said in a clip of the interview posted by Bloomberg. "That doesn't mean you can fight off the effects of stagflation, something like that, if it gets much worse."
"So far we're in pretty good shape, and so far it looks like a soft landing type of scenario, but put me on the cautious side of that one," he added.
Dimon's circumspect comments speak to the murky outlook for the economy.
Inflation has cooled from 40-year highs of more than 9% in the summer of 2022 to below 4% in recent months, but remains well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
The US central bank has raised interest rates from nearly zero to north of 5%, but has held off on reversing those increases until it's certain inflation is under control, and could even raise them if prices take off again.
Higher borrowing costs discourage spending, hiring, and investing, and tend to pull down asset prices, which can help to curb inflation but can also choke economic growth to the point a recession sets in.
Dimon underlined the sweeping effects that further hikes and a downturn could have, the Economic Club of New York said in a X post: "If rates go up and you have a #recession, that will hurt leveraged companies, jobs, profits, and real estate. So you can have circumstances where it's a triple whammy negatively affecting the #banks."
'Little bit of chaos'
The Wall Street heavyweight also flagged the fraught state of the world, echoing his recent annual letter and comments on JPMorgan's first-quarter earnings call.
"The geopolitical situation is probably the most complicated and dangerous since World War II," he said, pointing to US-China tensions and the Russia-Ukraine and Middle East conflicts.
Dimon underscored the impact that foreign conflicts can have on oil and gas prices, international trade, and military relationships, and how those effects can disproportionately hurt poorer countries.
He added that the world order is being "challenged" and could descend into a "little bit of chaos" as it realigns.
Dimon, a vocal skeptic of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, took a fresh potshot at them, per the Club's X feed: "Blockchain is real, we use it, but we've been talking about #crypto for 10 years and not a whole lot has come of it."
American Airlines was second with 79 points, while low-cost carrier Allegiant Air beat better-known legacy names like United and Delta to take third place. Allegiant registered a four-point rise in overall customer satisfaction, making it one of the fastest climbers this year.
United Airlines was the only carrier to lose ground, sliding three points to a score of 75.
The index, which has been running since 1994, tracks customer satisfaction across five travel industries — airlines, car rentals, lodging, online travel agencies, and ridesharing platforms.
To determine the rankings, 16,352 customers were asked to rate their experiences with companies based on nineteen different factors, such as ease of making a reservation, check-in process, cleanliness of cabin and lavatory, courtesy and helpfulness of flight crew, and timeliness of arrival. By collating this information, the American Customer Satisfaction Index says it provides a "definitive measure of passenger satisfaction."
Alaska Airline's top ranking comes despite the airline's nightmare safety incident in January 2024, during which a decommissioned door plug flew off during one of its flights at an altitude of 16,000 feet.
The plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9 made a safe landing back at Portland International Airport 35 minutes after takeoff, with all 177 people on board surviving.
Plaintiff Kyle Rinker tweeted a photo of the hole on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
Courtesy of Jonathan W. Johnson LLC.
14 passengers on the flight have since filed a class-action lawsuit against Boeing and Alaska Airlines, asking for monetary damages to cover injuries sustained during the incident and claims that some oxygen masks malfunctioned.
US airlines are getting better
Overall, the data found that customers were increasingly happy with airline travel, with ratings for all nineteen areas of customer satisfaction across airlines either improving or staying level with responses from 2023.
The polled customers were particularly happy with app services, the ease of making reservations, and airlines' websites, pointing to the importance of developing customer-friendly technology offerings.
As they become happier with travel experiences, customers are also travelling more. This February, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported a 21.5% rise in global air passengers compared to the previous year.
The agent only learned about the scam when a prospective renter called her.
A Corcoran real-estate agent and East Hamptons homeowner was caught up in an Airbnb scam when a fake listing for her property showed on the rental platform, The Real Deal reports.
And she only found out about it when someone called asking about the request to wire $25,000 for the phony rental.
According to the Real Deal, Sarah Stewart rents her Hamptons home in the spring and summer, but not through Airbnb.
The five-bedroom property — which is "moments" from the ocean and comes complete with two outdoor showers — is available now through Corcoran for $175,000 for the month of August through Labor Day.
Stewart told The Real Deal she had no idea her house had been listed in the scam until she got the phone call. The prospective renter was asking about the scammer's apparent request to send thousands of dollars off-platform to rent the house.
Stewart contacted Airbnb to have the fraudulent listing taken down. She declined to comment to Business Insider through a Corcoran spokesperson.
Airbnb initially removed the listing, but it reappeared a few hours later, according to The Real Deal.
Then, after her complaint rose through the ranks of Airbnb service reps, Stewart was advised to communicate with the "host" directly — and to include her contact information, The Real Deal reports. Stewart objected to the request, concerned about what might happen to her personal information.
In the end, Airbnb took down the listing after Corcoran sent the rental platform a copyright takedown notice for improperly using their photos, according to The Real Deal.
Though Stewart got the scam pages taken down, she told The Real Deal the ordeal was "terribly upsetting."
In a statement to BI, an Airbnb spokesperson said: "Fake listings have no place in our community, and following investigation, we removed the user and listing from the platform. Issues like this on Airbnb are rare, we continually invest in strengthening our defenses through measures like listing verification, and we protect guest bookings through safeguards like our secure payment processes, policies and Aircover support."
In September, Airbnb said it was cracking down on faux listings, noting it had removed 59,000 so far that year and prevented an additional 157,000 from ever appearing on its platform.
CEO Brian Chesky said fake listings were a big risk to the company's reputation, and Airbnb said at the time it would start to verify all listings in its top five markets using AI technology.
Google's search chief Prabhakar Raghavan warned staff about a changing landscape, CNBC reported.
He said life won't always be "hunky-dory" as rivals seek to challenge its search dominance.
Microsoft has been enhancing its search experience with AI-infused features as competition heats up.
It's time to brace for a new chapter, Google search chief Prabhakar Raghavan has reportedly warned staff.
He told Googlers in an all-hands meeting last month that "things have changed" and they're "not like they were 15, 20 years ago," CNBC reported, citing a recording of the meeting it obtained.
"It's not like life is going to be hunky-dory, forever," Raghavan also said, per the outlet.
Search remains a crucial part of Alphabet's business, with "search and other" accounting for revenues of $48 billion in the final three months of last year — more than $5 billion higher than the same period in 2022.
Raghavan's warning to employees comes as rivals such as startup Perplexity AI seek to take on Google's dominance by developing their own search engines.
CEO Aravind Srinivas announced Tuesday that it's raised about $63 million in a new funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion. Perplexity's backers include Jeff Bezos and Nvidia.
Raghavan also addressed new competitors in the meeting, CNBC reported. "They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI."
Google Search has changed little for more than 20 years, but the AI boom has forced its hand. Google said last year it was "supercharging" and "improving" users' search experience with a generative AI-powered version called Search Generative Experience (SGE).
SGE is still in its infancy, but Google started testing "AI overviews" about a month ago by giving some US and UK users an AI-generated summary of search results.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been stepping up its search ambitions. It started rolling out new AI features on Bing last year, including allowing users to search visually.
Microsoft said it was "reinventing" search when it introduced the new AI-infused Bing last February. CEO Satya Nadella said at the time" "AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all — search."
Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Rep. George Santos in the US Capitol on November 28, 2023.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Former New York Rep. George Santos suspended his campaign to return to Congress.
The disgraced politician, running as an independent, said he didn't want to siphon off Republican votes.
But he also reported zero campaign finance contributions and no spending.
Former New York Rep. George Santos announced that he was dropping out of his bid to return to Congress, saying he didn't want to siphon off Republican votes by running as an independent.
Santos was expelled from the House in December, ending a short and scandal-ridden time as the representative for New York's third district.
He was just the sixth member of Congress to be expelled in the House's history.
As a Congressman-elect, multiple reports emerged of Santos fabricating aspects of his personal biography, including a claim to be Jewish and details in his education and employment background.
Even so, the disgraced politician announced his intention to run again — this time in New York's first congressional district — during President Joe Biden's State of the Union address earlier this year.
A couple of weeks later, Santos ditched the GOP, saying he would be running as an independent.
But on Tuesday, Santos posted on X saying that he was suspending his campaign, writing: "Staying in this race all but guarantees a victory for the Dems in the race."
While criticizing the voting record of Republican candidate Nick Lalota, he said: "I don't want to split the ticket and be responsible for handing the house to Dems."
Santos, who has maintained a gadfly status since being ousted from office, said he would continue to contribute to discussions on public policy and suggested his political ambitions are not over.
"It's only goodbye for now, I'll be back," he wrote.
Santos has pleaded not guilty to 23 fraud-related charges made in October, in which he is accused of identity theft, stealing donors' credit card details, and lying to the FEC. He is currently awaiting trial.
ALICE workers often are in retail and food services.
Michael Nagle/Xinhua via Getty Images
The number of Americans who are ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — is increasing.
The ALICE population is largely Gen Z, boomers, and single parents.
ALICE workers often are in retail, healthcare, and food services but struggle to afford necessities.
Some Americans increasingly find themselves in an economic paradox: They make too much money to qualify for help but still can't afford basic necessities. They're a group that's fallen into gaping holes in America's creaky safety net, and their ranks are growing.
Those Americans are known as ALICE — or Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. The term, created by United Way's United For ALICE program, describes the Americans who may not qualify for services like food stamps or other benefits but still aren't making enough money to get by. They're above the poverty line but still in a tight economic position.
Part of that is due to a poverty line that's out of touch with how much Americans need to survive. Poverty rates have been falling across America, but the share of ALICE is on the rise in many states — and the share of Americans above the ALICE threshold is similarly falling. And Americans who are otherwise economically marginalized tend to fall into the ALICE bucket.
Each state has at least 32% of its population below the ALICE threshold, which includes both ALICE and those in poverty. The South has the highest concentration of states with about 50% of residents below the ALICE threshold. About 29% of the US population is ALICE, while 13% are below the poverty line.
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So who is the typical ALICE? They're either the youngest or oldest workers in the workforce, often single parents, and full-time workers — but they're still not making ends meet.
ALICE Americans are the youngest and oldest in the workforce and more likely to be Black and Hispanic
The ALICE population is most pronounced for Gen Z aged 16 to 25 at 36% and boomers or older at 39%. The percentage of ALICE millennials and Gen Xers are both 24%.
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Married adults with children tend not to be ALICE, as 80% reported being above the ALICE threshold. However, for single parents with children, the ALICE share jumps to 35% for moms and 36% for dads. About 27% of single Americans under 65 without kids are ALICE.
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Though ALICE makes up over a quarter of all racial groups, the percentage is lowest for Asian Americans at 26% and white Americans at 28%. The percentage is highest for Black and Hispanic Americans both at 41%.
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"There is a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic households, people with disability, younger and older households are more likely to be below the ALICE threshold, as are single-parent households with children versus married parent," Stephanie Hoopes, national director at United For ALICE, told BI.
ALICE Americans are all across the country and in both rural and urban areas
ALICE Americans exist everywhere from the isolated countryside of the US to the country's biggest cities. The breakdown between urban and rural ALICE is somewhat consistent — the ALICE population makes up 30% of the rural population and 28% of the urban population.
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Nationwide, no state has more than 73% of its workforce making enough for their household survival budget. Just 52% of workers in Florida make enough to meet their needs, compared to 55% in California and 59% in New York and Texas. Many Midwest states have percentages close to or above 70%, led by Iowa.
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ALICE Americans are working full-time in fields like retail and food service
Just 61% of all full-time workers earn enough to match their household survival budget, assuming one adult and one child. This statistic is highest for white workers at 69%, followed by Asian workers at 64%. However, only 43% of Hispanic workers make enough, compared to 46% of Black workers.
Nearly half of workers below the ALICE threshold are millennials, while 18% are Gen Z. Just over a quarter have a college degree, while 17% have less than a high school diploma.
Many workers below the ALICE threshold work in retail, healthcare, and food services. The average full-time hourly wage for these ALICE workers is $12.64 for retail, $15.99 for construction, and $11.09 for accommodation and food services, according to United For ALICE.
Still, just over half of ALICE workers put in full-time hours, and another 13% of ALICE who are not working are looking for work. That speaks to the conundrum the ALICE population faces: They are, for the most part, doing the things they're supposed to be doing to achieve financial stability. But, even so, they're flailing.
"Most of those jobs don't pay enough to cover the costs. So it's a mathematical equation and it's a structural problem. It's not that folks aren't trying hard," Hoopes said.
America's entrepreneurs have become more diverse in age, geography, and ethnicity in recent years.
Oscar Wong/Getty Images
Many Americans have started a business in recent years.
They're increasingly likely to be women, immigrants, and doing it as a side hustle.
The newest entrepreneurs are both young and old and looking to grow their wealth through their businesses.
Part of the American dream is the whisper that maybe, just maybe, you could make it striking out alone. And for many Americans, the siren call of entrepreneurship is one that's hard to resist.
But entrepreneurship isn't always attainable for everybody and it has its own systemic barriers to entry. The tides, however, might be changing a bit. Today's new entrepreneurs are coming from different backgrounds — and different parts of the country.
To be sure, many new businesses don't survive in the long run. Of the more than 700,000 US private sector businesses formed in March 2018, about 52% were still operating five years later, in March 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Still, Americans are increasingly embracing entrepreneurship: According to an annual report by Babson College published in August 2023, 19% of working-age US adults were in the process of starting a business or had done so over the prior three-and-a-half years. That was the highest level since the survey began in 1999.
So who are the newest entrepreneurs? They're a more diverse group than ever before, and for the most part, think self-employment is going well — but they might also see it as a financial lifeline.
New entrepreneurs are increasingly likely to be women, immigrants, and live in the Midwest
Women are increasingly taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, according to a survey of more than 1,300 entrepreneurs who started their businesses in 2023 conducted by the human-resources tech company Gusto.
The Gusto survey, conducted between January and March 2023, found that 49% of new business owners were women, compared to 45% of men — some respondents declined to identify as male or female or disclose their gender. Gusto compared these figures to Census Bureau data from 2019, when 29% of new entrepreneurs were women.
Broadly, self-employed workers are still more likely to be male — especially compared with the larger workforce, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Sixty percent of new entrepreneurs were white, 14% were AAPI, 13% were Hispanic, and 6% were Black, per Gusto. The share of new Hispanic entrepreneurs rose from 8% in 2022 to 13% in 2023, Gusto found.
America's entrepreneurs are also increasingly likely to be born outside the US, according to a 2022 report published by the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Citing current population survey data, the report found that in 2021, over 28% of new entrepreneurs were foreign-born — up from about 13% in 1996.
From March 2023 to March 2024, business formation applications were up in the Midwest, per the Census Bureau. New Hampshire saw more aspiring entrepreneurs, with applications up 20.7% — the highest year-over-year rate among all states. Similarly, in Minnesota, business applications were up 15.3%, and Montana saw applications up 16.4%.
But the South is seeing a new entrepreneurship boom. According to the Census Bureau's March 2024 business formation data, the South saw 195,341 business applications; the Northeast saw a fraction of that 64,355 — and that's with business applications in the South ticking down from February.
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"The center of gravity of entrepreneurship is also shifting from coastal cities in the Northeast and West to the Southeast US and Mountain West," Gusto economist Luke Pardue wrote in a July 2023 analysis. That might be part of a larger shift as the center of the US economy — and the country's population — moves South.
Many young people have entered the ranks of entrepreneurs in recent years. Among USadults between 18 and 34 years old, 27% were actively engaged in starting or running a new business, per the Babson report, That was nearly twice as high as the 35-to-64 age group, at 14.5%.
However, the Kauffman Foundation report found rising entrepreneurship rates among older workers. In 2021, nearly 23% of new entrepreneurs were between the ages of 55 and 64, up from about 15% in 1996. Still, the largest share of new entrepreneurs, about 26%, came from the 20 to 34-year-old age cohort.
Entrepreneurs are also clustered in certain industries: In 2022, the most common industry for new entrepreneurs was wholesale, retail, and hospitality, which accounted for about 28% of new business formations, per the Babson report.
Why Americans want to be entrepreneurs — and how it's going
Having more work-life flexibility, becoming financially stable, and supplementing income were the top motivations new entrepreneurs gave for starting their businesses, according to the Gusto survey.
More than half of new entrepreneurs said they relied on personal savings to start their businesses. Eight percent took out a private business loan, 7% got a loan from family or friends, and 3% got a Small Business Administration-backed loan. Thirty-one percent said no funding was needed to start their businesses.
Fifty-six percent of new entrepreneurs said they didn't have another job when they started their business, compared to 25% who had a full-time job and 19% who had a part-time job.
Once they get their businesses up and running, self-employed workers feel pretty good about their gigs, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,902 Americans conducted in February 2023. Compared to workers who are not self-employed, the Americans working for themselves report finding their jobs more enjoyable and fulfilling — and they're not as stressed. Those self-employed workers still tend to be overwhelmingly male — 64% of self-employed respondents were men, compared to 53% of all workers — and nearly 70% are white.
And newfound business owners are receptive to different ways of working. Many new entrepreneurs are open to using AI tools and hiring remote workers, per the Gusto survey. Twenty-two percent said they were already incorporating generative AI tools into their operations, while 16% said they're open to using them, but not yet actively doing so.
More than half of new entrepreneurs surveyed by Gusto said they hired employees who worked remotely all or some of the time. Thirty-five percent said their businesses were fully remote, while 22% were hybrid. According to the Pew report, 60% of self-employed workers who can do their work from home are indeed clocking in from their houses.
Entrepreneurship isn't always enough to pay the bills, though. The share of entrepreneurs who started a business while juggling another gig rose from 27% in 2022 to 44% in 2023.
The Babson report found that most US entrepreneurs, 71%, were motivated by the prospect of boosting their wealth through their businesses. However, the share who said they were motivated by "necessity" rose from roughly 46% in 2021 to 54.5% in 2022.
"Perhaps job insecurity experienced during the pandemic and the nature of the job market as unemployment eased led many to venture into entrepreneurship as a viable career choice," the report said.
Miriam Webb had posted more than 40 videos of her Chick-fil-A staff meals.
@mirithesiren on TikTok
A former Chick-fil-A worker said the chain asked her to stop posting videos of her staff meals on TikTok.
Miriam Webb had posted more than 40 videos of her staff meals. Some had over 1 million views.
Webb has now quit her job to pursue content creation.
A former Chick-fil-A worker said that the fried-chicken chain asked her to stop posting videos of her staff meals on TikTok because she was breaking company policy.
Miriam Webb, known on TikTok as @mirithesiren, posted her first review of a free meal she had on shift in December.
Since then, Webb has posted more than 40 videos in her Chick-fil-A uniform showing viewers her free employee meals, including sandwiches, nuggets, waffle fries, and mac and cheese, many of which have hundreds of thousands of views.
But Chick-fil-A has now put a stop to that, Webb said in a video in mid-April.
"I was reached out to by Chick-fil-A upper management and PR to let me know that my videos actually break a rule in our employee handbook," she said. "Unfortunately, Chick-fil-A is not willing to make an exception for me or collab with me."
In the comments, Webb said she wasn't able to publicly share which policy she had violated.
She told Business Insider in an interview that the owner of her store was "gracious" and explained the policy "very kindly." He said she could continue to make Chick-fil-A review videos not wearing her uniform, she added.
"I'm not angry with Chick-fil-A," Webb said in a video. "I still love the company."
Chick-fil-A has allowed her to keep her current videos on her profile, she said in a video.
Webb told BI that she handed in her notice on Monday after spending just over a year working at a Chick-fil-A in Los Angeles County to focus on content creation instead. "I love my team," she said, speaking about her time at the company.
Chick-fil-A did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Food reviews are hot stuff
Restaurant reviews and food rankings are popular topics for TikTok videos. Some creators monetize their content through paid partnerships, and viewers have been pushing them to declare whether they paid for their meals themselves or got them provided by the restaurant.
Webb started her staff meal videos with the same intro: "It's a great day at Chick-fil-A and today I'm gonna show you what I get on my employee meal."
One from February has been viewed 3.5 million times on TikTok. Some of the videos show her trying out "menu hacks," such as making what she describes as boba milk tea and strawberry frosted lemonade using ingredients her restaurant has in stock. In other videos, she mixes together various Chick-fil-A sauces to create new flavors.
Miriam Webb's videos include reviews and "menu hacks."
@mirithesiren on TikTok
The videos appear to be filmed in a quiet part of the restaurant's dining room or a staff room. Some are recorded in the restaurant's outdoor seating area.
Webb's last Chick-fil-A video before the company's PR team contacted her, which has 3.4 million views, shows her reviewing the four drinks in its limited-edition Cherry Berry range. Though she wore her Chick-fil-A uniform in the video and appeared to be filming in the restaurant, Webb said she paid for the beverages herself rather than getting them through her meal allowance.
Webb's TikTok account also features videos of her reviewing her staff meals at Aldi, where she also has a job.
In her video announcing the end of her Chick-fil-A staff meal videos, Webb said that other brands wanting to collaborate with her should reach out.
On Sunday, Webb posted what appeared to be her first piece of sponsored content — a review of various Shake Shack sandwiches. Webb gave the meal a "10 out of 10" rating.
Commenters on the video said they were glad to see Webb score a paid partnership. "You deserve it!! The other company missed a blessing," one commenter wrote.
Other collaborations are on the way, Webb told BI, including one with a "very large" chicken company.
"We have been in meetings back-to-back," she said.
Are you a fast food superfan? Contact this reporter at gdean@insider.com.