An eruption of internet material about allegations made by a person who showed up twice yesterday at Hope Baking Company's lobby, alleging that the company’s human resources head had sent him racist and homophobic epithets by text message has caused the general manager to make clear the allegations are false.

According to GM Jeff McCarroll, the person came to the bakery’s lobby yesterday asking why they had not been hired after applying twice and saying they knew several people who had applied and been phoned already. Once they were told by McCarroll the matter would be looked into, the person left.

About an hour later, the person came to the lobby a second time. McCarroll told the person again the matter would be investigated. At that point, McCarroll said, the person said ‘You’re one of those racists, aren’t you?” McCarroll responded with “Whatever” and told the person to leave or police would be called.

The person wouldn’t leave but showed McCarroll a Facebook messenger text on the person’s  phone that looked as if it were from the bakery’s human resources director complete with photo in which the director appears to type an assortment of racist and homophobic slurs. The person said they had been sent the message last week.

McCarroll told SWARK.Today later that it looked as if the message was sent from a fake profile: “It's obviously a page that someone had copied her picture from her main Facebook page and created another one. It had a November 1 2022 date on it …  It definitely wasn't her.”

After the person left the bakery lobby, McCarroll learned that material inaccurately recounting the circumstances of the story, including the racism and homophobia allegations, has spread on social media. “We want to get the word out that that's not our way. We believe it was a hoax … The company has always been based on fairness. It's a minority-owned company. So we just want everyone to know that it was fake. And we're investigating it to get to the bottom of it.”

Today Hope Baking Company announced the installation of a larger electrical transformer that will allow the company more electrical power and the ability to start a new production line. McCarroll said about 75 more jobs will be added to make this possible.