Restaurant Hygiene Horror Stories That Can Hurt Your Brand

We have all been in a situation where venturing out to a new restaurant resulted in a bad dining experience, whether the food you were served was of a poor quality or you witnessed a food hygiene disaster, everyone has a horror story to share.

We all want the best value for money, but for some food producers, this comes at the expense of health and safety. Some unscrupulous business practices such as serious hygiene issues, food tampering and general corner cutting when it comes to sourcing ingredients and carrying out adequate checks on standards. You would hope your quality beef burger was made just this morning with 100% beef, but how do you know it was handled correctly and safely? Here is a behind the scenes look at some restaurant hygiene horror stories from around the web.

Pest Control

An example of poor hygiene behind the scenes is a lack of pest control. A worker chased a rat that ran along the top of an ice cream machine. It then fell into the ice cream mix that was melting at the end of a night’s service and drowned. The store manager would not let the employee throw away the mix and told them not to tell anyone, threatening to fire the worker. Clearly more worry had gone into the financial loss of the ice cream mix than the health and safety of the customers.

Sucking Up For Revenge

It was thought that the waitress of one restaurant, offering to make the Manager his coffee every morning was an act of kindness, but it wasn’t. She mixed ground rat droppings into his coffee every day and the manager had – and I would assume still has – no idea. However, it did not just occur behind the scenes, but also for customers who did not tip her! The lesson here is to never make the waiting staff or any member of the cooking team angry; you never know what happens when your food or drink leaves your sight. Treat others as you want to be treated, including management and other members of staff. Give a nice tip if you feel it is deserved of your waiter, and praise the chef if you are very happy with your meal. Who knows, if may become your favourite restaurant one day.

Think Clean, Happy Thoughts

When you next visit a restaurant, kindly ask for a look inside the kitchen if you are allowed, or to see the hygiene certificate for the establishment. If they do not have it somewhere visible for customers to see, then ask why! This will put your mind at ease and go a way towards proving that professionalism of the establishment and its commitment to food preparation and health and safety legislation.

Image by Mike Licht sourced under creative commons

If you are a business owner, remember that there are external cleaning services available for your restaurant. If you regularly have busy dinner service, and the old fashioned scrubbing brush and elbow grease just won’t do, give the Evo office cleaning calculator a try.

Why not check out the Restaurant Horror Stories Facebook page for more woeful tales? Alternatively, add your own story if you have been unfortunate enough to have a bad experience.

Emily Jarvis is a lover of quality foods and a believer that fresh is always the best when visiting any restaurant. She writes for Evo Cleaning.

Featured image: License: Creative Commons image source

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Marty Huggins

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