VIDEO: Former Panera Bread Employee Reportedly Fired Over TikTok Video Of Its Mac 'N' Cheese Prep

A former Panera Bread employee claims she was fired for a video she recorded of how the restaurant chain prepares macaroni and cheese.

The video first appeared on a TikTok account belonging to a woman identified as Brianna Ramirez, who reportedly worked for Panera Bread at the time. In it, Ramirez records the process which employees prepare Panera’s mac ‘n’ cheese dish from a bag filled with one serving. The sealed bag is placed in a commercial boiler and cooked before the employee takes it out, opens it with scissors, and pours it into a bowl to serve.

The video quickly went viral, gaining almost 950,000 likes on TikTok before being shared around further on YouTube and Twitter. Ramirez reposted the video on her personal Twitter with the caption, “lol i lost my job for this video.”

“Mac and cheese is made offsite with our proprietary recipe developed by our chefs and using our sourced ingredients that meet our standards for our clean menu offerings,” a Panera spokesperson told NBC's "Today" in a statement on Tuesday. “It is shipped frozen to our bakery cafes – this allows us to avoid using preservatives which do not meet our clean standards.”

A representative also said Panera serves 3 million servings of their mac ‘n’ cheese dish a month. They also said the chain was committed to using fewer synthetic additives, preservatives, flavors and food colorings.

“We sell a lot of mac and cheese, so we go through it pretty quickly,” a New Jersey Panera Bread manager also told Today.