Cellphone cameras may well be the downfall of fast food: A McDonald’s customer in Orlando witnessed employees refilling the milkshake machine from a bucket market “Soiled Towels Only” and snapped a picture with her cellphone. She sent the photo to Orlando’s WFTV.
WFTV sent the photo to McDonald’s. Here’s their response: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have taken swift and immediate action to resolve this matter. Nothing is more important to us than the safety and quality of our food.”
McDonald’s sent a different email to the picture-taking customer: “The machine was cleaned that morning. They sanitized the bucket to capture milk and after the repair work was done they put the milk back in the machine. This was an isolated incident.”
WFTV says the McDonald’s in question has had numerous sanitary violations in the past. For those of you in the Orlando area, it’s the McDonald’s on “Narcoossee Road in the Lake Nona area.”
Yuck.
Alleged Milkshake Mistake Turns Stomachs, Prompts Questions [WFTV]
(Photo:WFTV)
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Being in the north east i often will eat a “Pizzeria”. On rare occasions i will notice that the pizza may have a “Wash Rag” flavor to it. Im sure it is from some ignorant person whipping down the oven surface with a filthy wash rag. YUK!!
Being from the Northeast i will often eat at a Pizzeria. On rare occasion i may notice the pizza has a “Wash Rag” flavor to it. I’m sure it is from some ignorant person whipping down the oven surface with a filthy wash rag. YUK!!
@enm4r: I just don’t think that reprimanding Skippy McWageSlave is going to help that much in this situation. Totally agree that management should be fired, but next time is there going to be a worker’s revolt where the fry cooks stand up for proper sanitary procedures? Doubtful.
And I’m not saying that poor training excuses what happened, merely that an employee in that situation isn’t likely to risk job termination by being insubordinate in order to do the right thing.
@floofy: It appears that the machine was emptied for a repair, not for sanitizing. I could be wrong.
It depends on the jurisdiction, but generally the bacterial cycle is broken either nightly or weekly. What this means is that while the machine is sanitized every night in all locations, the shake mix that is in the machine at the end of the night is used the next morning after starting the machine on fresh mix. This is called rerun. Now, this is just a precaution for food contamination reasons, as the shake mix is refrigerated below 40 degrees at all times. The mix is no more susceptible to anything in a bucket or in the shake machine.
Perception is everything, but a bucket is just a bucket. If it’s clean, it’s fine.
i worked at a mcd’s when i was 16. and the shake/ice cream machine was ALWAYS the grossest thing in there. the manual said we were supposed to clean it once a week but I’m fairly certain no one ever did. and when i’d come in on the opening shift in the morning the machine would have been off all night. and when you opened the top it would smell of rancid milk (which is shocking, cause most of it ISNT milk). but all we did (and all we were told to do) was just top it up with another “bag ‘o mix”. and i worked at one of the few corporate owned stores (no franchisee involved).
that being said, i had a delicious milk shake from a mcd’s just last week.
I thought you could only use stainless with dairy or at least it’s a best practice.
One more thing – I brew my own beer and if there’s one thing brewers know is it that you CANNOT sanitize those plastic buckets because they scratch so easily. They can say they sanitized them all they want, it doesn’t make it so.
All this talk about eating out of buckets–everybody knows if you want to eat out of a bucket, you have to go to KFC.
There was a rumor going round about the North Pole, AK, McDonald’s about a decade ago that someone had shit in the shake machine.
And that it had only been found when the machine clogged.
Don’t know if it’s true, and it was a long time ago, but ….bleh.
@killavanilla:
Your customer is an idiot.
At least they didn’t get a picture of the bucket they used to fill the soft-serve ice cream machine. “Human Excrement Only” just isn’t spinnable.
as a past mickey d’s employee, i’ll tell you to never, i repeat NEVER get any ice cream or shakes. i’ll sum up my story about it in a nut shell…..maggots! yup! have you ever been told the machine is “down”? its when they went to “fix” it that it was discovered to be a fly breeding haven.
@RvLeshrac: “I’m also sure that the bucket *WAS* sanitized. Properly cleaned, it would be safe enough for a baby to drink out of.”
LOL. NO matter how clean it was, babies aren’t supposed to drink out of buckets. It’s a drowning hazzard.
Seriously though, everyone has different tolerances for what they want in their food. That’s why , if you are in the restaurant business, you have to do things that aren’t only safe, they are perceived as safe if you want your customers to trust you.
@enm4r:
My guess is it wasn’t an issue of finding another bucket. My guess is the first guy put the shake mix in the bucket. Then the last guy put the shake mix back, and they preiously used the buckets to clean floors, so they had sanitizing stuff in there previously. Therefor, I will never eat at fast food again (I don’t anyways but yuck.)
This is why I don’t eat at fast food places while travelling in the US. It’s been my experience that pretty much all restaraunts in the United States are compeltely filthy when compared to their Canadian counterparts.
Disgusting.
perhaps they sanitized the bucket with bleach before using it for the milkshakes?
MMMMMM Dirty Dish Towel flavor my favorite!!!
@newlywed:
im in ur bukkit, stealin ur towelz
WHY WERE THEY REUSING THE “CAPTURED” MILK???????
grrrrrrooooossssssssss.
@MEGMARCO & Chris Walters
Maybe a dead dog at work thread? Mine involves a dog, a little old lady and a lot of weird phone calls.
@NickRB: Mmmm… bleach-flavored soiled milkshakes. Destroys e. coli, salmonella, and your liver!
@ekthesy:
You’re right that slaughterhouses can be pretty gross to people who aren’t used to it / don’t understand what’s going on there (so can open-heart surgery), but that’s one of the reasons we don’t eat raw meat in this country. The milkshakes were not cooked later as far as I know. So I still consider this episode to warrant an, “ewwwwww.”
you CANNOT sanitize those plastic buckets because they scratch so easily. They can say they sanitized them all they want, it doesn’t make it so.
@OKH: Exactly!
What about the container the milk came in? They didn’t have empty plastic bottles of milk, juice, or anything they could have used?
Snopes tackle the McDonalds “Shake” ingredient rumours: [www.snopes.com]
@newlywed: DO NOT WANT!
For all those who think that using just any recently cleaned bucket is fine, there are differences in plastics and it matters when they come into contact with food.
[www.cfsan.fda.gov]
[virtualweberbullet.com]
” Plastics To Avoid
If you know that a plastic container or bag is not made of food grade material, you should not use it. If you cannot determine the food grade status of a container or bag, you should assume it is not food grade and not use it.
Examples include:
* HDPE white plastic containers of unknown food grade status
* Garbage cans or pails
* Mop buckets
* Laundry detergent or kitty litter buckets
* Dry pet food buckets
* 5-gallon utility buckets from the home center
* Household storage containers
* Garbage bags
* Any container, even if made of food grade plastic that has been used to store non-food items like chemicals, paint, or detergent.”
Why are you people arguing about how sanitized the bucket could be?
Why can’t they buy a NEW bucket?
Why do they have to sanitize the “soiled towels only” bucket to use for the milk?
Why can’t they have a special ‘milkshake cleaning only’ bucket?
@goodguy812
Noted and yuck
Wait, if you have container C holding stuff S, and you remove stuff S, and sanitize container C, and then RE-ADD stuff S, container C is no longer sanitized.
Thats like taking the shit out of your toilet while you clean the toilet and then putting it back in and calling it sparkling.
I would also like to point out as a beer brewer (and hence santization nazi), “soiled” or any other type of towel used wet around sinks/floors/etc is basically OVERFLOWING with bacteria, and bacteria LOVE the lactose in milk.
There is a reason the bucket is labled “Soiled Towels Only”. Why should anyone believe it was even possible to sanitize the bucket so it would be safe to hold milk in it?
Again as a brewer I would like to point out that plastic easily scratches, especially non-food grade. Bacteria grow in the scratches in the bucket because you cannot clean that surface anymore when you wipe down the inside. You either have to be very careful with your plastic, or use all glass, which is what I brew in now.
Yet _another_ reason not to eat at McDonalds, as if we needed another.
I have to wonder how common this is. A couple years ago, we stopped at a Long John Silver’s (our first, and last time ever), and the woman in front of us ordered a milkshake. An employee went into the back room and brought out a jug of milk and began pouring it into the milkshake machine. The jug was labeled “NO GOOD” in large red block letters on the side. The woman told him, and he apologized profusely and left. The manager then came out and apologized. We and several other people walked out.
Stay away from fast food milkshakes. Imagine if she’d been in the drive-through.
Although WTF is definitely more appropriate… The TV station at the top was actually WFTV…
The power of McD’s. The story appears to no longer be on WFTV’s website
“what about the container the milk came in”
The mix comes in bags which are next to impossible to pour into something high up.
I like how they say they did nothing wrong AND that it was an isolated incident.
It’s like Michael Scott saying “I didn’t get both of your messages.”
Here’s a good one (from Maddox):
I’m loving it = I am loving it
Rearrange the letters and you get:
Ailing Vomit