In the recent "takeaway empty bag" incident, McDonald's is said to be the only exception, and has received many praises. But what I didn't expect was that just a few days later, McDonald's was exposed to serious food safety problems.
On May 13 (today), according to the Beijing News, two McDonald's restaurants were found by undercover reporters that there were problems such as tampering with food shelf life labels, using expired ingredients, selling food after the expiration date, and cutting corners.
1 McDonald's has reappeared as a food safety problem
In March this year, a reporter from the Beijing News went undercover for McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Union Store, in the back kitchen, the reporter found that the bread used to make McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger had expired, so he reported the situation to an old employee, but the latter did not let the reporter discard the bread, but warned: "Don't squeak, you just need to make an order, don't worry about the problem of time bars." ”
Subsequently, the employee used scissors to cut out the time slip on the bread packaging bag and reposted a new time slip, which was extended from 10 p.m. on March 6 to 2 p.m. on March 7.
Like bread, the McDonald's restaurant's meat ingredients also have the problem of modifying the expiration date label "Longevity".
△ The picture is from the Beijing News
The restaurant also had a problem selling expired food. The report mentioned that at 4 p.m. on March 9, there were still three fried and unsold pipa legs stored in the insulated cabinet in the back kitchen of the restaurant. According to the regulations, the lute leg needs to be put into the holding cabinet after frying, and the countdown function is turned on, and if it is not sold within 20 minutes, it needs to be discarded. However, the reality is that the lute legs were not sold until 5 p.m., and no staff discarded them until the dinner rush hour, when the fried lute legs were sold to customers.
Also, there was a problem with the oil in the restaurant. The undercover reporter found that the oil used for frying that was replaced on the evening of March 7 had turned inky by the evening of the 9th (there was no visual change after filtration). The test results showed that the polar component value (26.6) of the frying oil sample had exceeded its specified value, and only 0.4 was short of exceeding the national standard waste standard, but it was still used until the evening of the 10th.
△ The picture is from the Beijing News
In addition to the oil problem, the same is true for McDonald's Ji Restaurant (located in Jinan), and both stores have cut corners. For example, 4 servings of "Scrambled Double Egg Burger" originally needed to scramble 8 eggs, but only 7 were fried, and "you can't see it when it's cooked"; Another example is that a burger normally needs 20 ml of sauce, but in fact it only serves 10 ml.
2 Danglao has been on the hot search many times because of food safety
Before being exposed by undercover agents this time, McDonald's had been exposed to food safety problems many times:
At the end of February this year, McDonald's launched a new 1+1 all-you-can-eat menu. One of the most eye-catching is the "Crunchy Tribute Vegetable Roll". However, after tasting it, some consumers have diarrhea, and in severe cases, they have vomiting and diarrhea, and even fever, dizziness, and herpes, which are suspected of food poisoning. According to netizens' speculation, the reason why McDonald's tribute rolls cause diarrhea may be because they are too spicy, which stimulates the stomach. In addition, some netizens speculated that the fungus in the tribute vegetable roll had deteriorated.
In July 2022, at a McDonald's restaurant in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, an employee picked up bread that had fallen on the ground and continued to use it. The person who filmed the video said that he was queuing up to pick up his meal when a large basket of bread suddenly fell from the shelf in the kitchen, and an employee squatted on the ground to pick up all the bread and put it back on the shelf. The employees on the side witnessed the whole process, but none of them reacted to it.
In October 2021, a vlogger made an unannounced visit to a McDonald's restaurant in Hefei, Anhui Province, and found that the restaurant had problems such as blackened lettuce and still being used, and replacing expired ingredient labels. After the incident, McDonald's responded that it asked the general managers of all restaurants across the country to verify the implementation of food safety again.
Earlier, in 2012, McDonald's was named by CCTV 315 Gala, and its Sanlitun store had illegal operations such as refurbishing and reselling expired food. At that time, McDonald's issued a public statement saying that it would apologize to consumers with practical actions, and would deepen management of this matter to provide consumers with safe and hygienic food.
From the above cases, it is not difficult to find that some of the operations that McDonald's has been exposed today can be called "long-standing" and almost "traditional".
3 Why McDonald's keeps repeating crimes
As a world-renowned restaurant chain brand, McDonald's business philosophy is quality, service, cleanliness and value for money, and quality ranks first. At the store level, it also has detailed operating specifications and standards.
However, according to media reports, these standards are like the ears of a deaf person, just a decoration. Its exposed problems are extremely inconsistent with its brand image; And these problems can happen again and again, which is not at all like what a big international brand can do.
Why is this happening?
△McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Union Restaurant (picture from the Beijing News)
One of the more mainstream views in the market is that because the punishment is not severe enough, the cost of violating the law is too low to have a deterrent effect. "If you can find out about it, you will punish him for bankrupting his family, who will dare to do this?"
Indeed, for these businesses that ignore food safety, the regulatory authorities should strike hard, especially for such repeated offenders and repeated teachers, they should be severely punished.
In addition, the reason why international brands like McDonald's have frequent problems, analysts believe that this may also be because some of its standards and specifications do not meet the actual operation of restaurants.
For example, a report in the Beijing News mentioned that after the pipa legs are fried, they need to be put into the insulated cabinet and turn on the countdown function, and those that are not sold within 20 minutes need to be disposed of. During the 9 days that the reporter was undercover, the insulated cabinet was used every day, but the timer function was never turned on once, and it was only opened when there was a leader to check it. Why don't you usually open it? Because "the sound of 'dripping' after the time is up, it is annoying".
For another example, according to the requirements, employees need to thaw ingredients 3 times a day in different time periods, and how many ingredients are out of the warehouse when thawing need to be subtracted from the remaining amount in the kitchen according to the specified quantity; However, some employees are not careless in their work, and the amount of ingredients out of the warehouse is too large, resulting in the inability to use up within the expiration date. According to the regulations, these inexhaustible ones need to be discarded, but from the perspective of the boss, "You are the boss, do you throw it away?" In addition, the store will take stock of the amount of shipments and sales every week and month, and if there are too many discarded ingredients, it will lead to a discrepancy in the data of the two, and if the difference is large, the store leader cannot explain it.
It can be seen that McDonald's standards and requirements are really just like what an employee of its excellent agricultural union store said, "standards are just standards".
4 How many big names are still cheating
At the end of last month, McDonald's was on a hot search because store employees scolded customers for being stupid ×. Today, food safety problems have been exposed again. Taken together, this series of things gives people the feeling that McDonald's store operation and management have a big problem - how can there be such a low-level and outrageous thing?
Like McDonald's, another international brand, Burger King, has also been on the hot search for modifying the shelf life. At the CCTV 315 party in 2020, Burger King was exposed to using expired bread to make hamburgers and arbitrarily modifying the shelf life of chicken thigh steaks, and finally the 6 stores involved were fined a total of more than 910,000 yuan.
In August last year, the Wuhan Branch of Xikebao (Shanghai) Catering Service Co., Ltd., an affiliate of the Internet celebrity burger restaurant "SHAKE SHACK", was fined 100,000 yuan, confiscated 6,012 yuan of illegal income, and the relevant person in charge was fined more than 57,000 yuan for illegal acts such as using expired cream and tomato sauce and not having a product qualification certificate.
In the food sector, fraud is tantamount to evil. The impact of these well-known brands is so bad that many of their fans feel "faith collapsed".
As of May 5, McDonald's had 6,743 stores, and it plans to reach 10,000 stores by 2028, according to data from Narrow Door Restaurant. There is still a lot of time, enough for it to cultivate its internal strength and put an end to low-level problems.
Bibliography:
[1] Beijing News Investigation Group. Undercover McDonald's two restaurants: tampering with food shelf life labels, internal quality standards are only enforced at the time of inspection. Beijing News, 2024-05-13.