Burger King Expiration Stickers Can't Cover Up Shame
Burger King has some 'splainin to do. When Reader Evan ordered a pie, he presumed that the stated expiration date was truthful... until he peeled back the layers of deception. Full story inside.
Straight from the tip:
A sticker claiming that my pie, already well into the secondary portion
of its digestive adventure, was good for eating well into the fifth day
of the week. Perfectly alright as this was only Wednesday in the
aforementioned week. But, alas, there seemed to be some sort of ruse
going on in my very own home. Underneath the sticker that assured me of
my delicious treat was well within the time allotted for its freshness,
was yet another sticker not bearing the same message of assurance.
Behold! A nearly identical sticker bearing a freshness date that was
already two days well before the current one! Which would mean the this
was scheduled for original consumption a possible full FOUR days in the
past! AND! They didn't even have the common sense to remove the ORIGINAL
STICKER!
That is some pretty obvious fraud, right there. I would have confronted someone about it at the store to see their reaction and gauge their response. Ask for a refund, because little sounds more disgusting than fast food pie after its expiration date. Past that, I think dropping the Better Business Bureau a line would be pertinent.
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Comments:
I'm not trying to blame the consumer with this question:
Did the taste of the pie seem "off" to you? Did anything about the pie strike you odd?
Student of drama english?
I work at a restaurant part time, and trust me, this is a common practice. It is usually just to extend the shelflife a day, but sometimes stuff gets missed, and sometimes people just don't care. Happy eating out, and oh yea the 5 second rule happens.
I've had a problem with ordering a milk (chocolate or white) from Fast Food places. After feeding unspeak jr. with old Milk I always make a point at actually reading the dates. It has not been a one time occurrence.
Get a Life! You are complaining about crap food and it's quality?
Really, I wouldn't eat at McDonalds even when I worked there during High School. Their food is disgusting the way they prepare it in the back. I would go across the street and eat at Burger King for my lunch brakes. Man...did that piss off the managers.
@Shark1998: Good thing you went to Burger King, the standard of quality and cleanliness in the food industry, then.
@fenrisulfr:
You forgot the "at the restaurant I work at" after you said "this is common practice." Your experience at one restaurant does not mean all places are like that. Just like MY experience that it DOESN'T happen doesn't mean all places are like that.
Plus, I do the 5 second rule everywhere, including outside. George Carlin had a good point: What good is an immune system if you don't use it?
I just bought the Cliff Notes for that post:
"Man finds multiple expiration date stickers on his Burger King pie, leading him to question the freshness of said pie."
Essay test on Monday. Have a good weekend.
@Shark1998: Wait. You're telling someone to go eat at Burger King right after they finished complaining about the same chain?
Glad to know you are some one people can count on.
I thought I had bad grammar.
Just eat the damn pie and stop complaining. I'm sure all the preservatives in it make that thing last for months before it goes bad.
The pie is a lie!
Just eat the damn pie and stop complaining.
@Skankingmike: Why should he? Why assume the expiration date doesn't take preservatives into account and is months off?
Why should anyone be OK with any restaurant using expired food?
@Adam Holcomb: Couldn't agree more. If I was caught changing expiration dates where I used to work (McDonald's), my managers would throw me out before I could peel the adhesive.
Having been a Burger King restaurant manager from 2003 - 2008, I can say that these things do unfortunately happen. Here's what I can offer:
1) Pies have a 72hr hold time once removed from the freezer. Does this mean that they are automatically bacteria ridden an unedible at exactly 72hrs? Absolutely not, this is just the standard that BK practices.
2) Burger King has standards that are almost too high and unattainable in many markets. Having worked at high volume and low volume stores, it is much more difficult to keep these things from happening in smaller stores. The manager is expected be on top of every last piece of the store, often times without help from other capable managers underneath him. The amount of checklists a manager must have completed between open and the start of lunch is absurd. There are at least 3 required BK checklists, much of which has duplications or things that are just silly to worry about (like gum on the exterior walkways).
3) Burger King takes the health code and generally doubles or halves the requirements. What I mean is that when they say that pie is only servable for 3 days, it is probably 6. This is done because it is human nature to cheat. Especially when these things have a BIG impact on the bottom line with ever increasing food costs. Another example is the dish sanitizer. The food code states that after dishes are washed and rinsed they should soak for 10 - 20 seconds in properly diluted sanitizer solution prior to air drying. The BK standard is 60 seconds. Why? Because if you tell an employee that it's 10 seconds, they will simply dip the dish in the sanitizer and remove it.
I am not trying to justify the actions of the BK in question, nor say the tipster is in the wrong. However, a BBB claim is pretty silly. His health was more than likely never put into jeopardy. Being a fast-food manager is a very trying position as you often times are understaffed or staffed with people who just don't care. It's very difficult to keep a legitimate (read: legal) staff and meet the bottom line with all the corporate and franchise regulations and checklists.
If you don't agree...work in food service of any kind for a week. You'll quickly change your tune and the way you treat waitresses, bartenders, bus-boys, etc.
@unspeak: Sadly, this happens a lot. Milk is usually handled by the front counter people, and general, they are less familar with the concept of rotating stock as the people in back who deal with it daily.
@Shark1998: Congratulations, you're the first blame the victim post of the new year and the new owners!
I'll get the champagne.
You ate the whole thing, it clearly wasn't bad.
It's also very possible that they put the wrong sticker on first, and lazily stuck the correct sticker over it.
All of that aside; who in the world writes like that about an old pie?
The pie-eater might be able to make a claim against False Advertising, and there might be a FDA law against that too. Other than that, if you don't get sick, don't worry about it. Of course on that note one could say you want to make a deal out of it so that no one else might get sick from this practice in the future.
I don't understand what he's torqued off about. If you're eating at Burger King, you understand that dodgy food is part of the adventure, not something out of place.
Maybe the carton was labeled previously and never used, so rather than waste the packaging they just put a new sticker on it, maybe they're trying not to be wasteful.
@Coles_Law: Oh, jinx. :) I was just about to say the same thing.
I think I shall go eat at some variety of McFood for lunch today just to spite the flame-the-victim-ers. Also Fetal McGee likes fast food. And not much else, I gotta say.
That's what you get when you eat at a Dow Chemical plant? Dunno... got nuthin' else. From what I hear, that stuff doesn't expire.
I didn't even realize that fast food pies came with expiration dates!
That was actually my initial thought, too.
Alex, I'd recommend skipping the BBB for now and calling up the local Department of Health. I'm sure they'd love to hear about the local fast food joint violating food safety laws.
1. Eat expired pie
2. Call DOH
3. Call BBB
4. ????
5. Profit!
@Nerdhouse1: It's possible the pie was labeled by someone new who stuck the day he pulled the pie from the freezer on the carton instead of the day it expired. Someone else caught the mistake and corrected it.
@Adam Holcomb:
ive worked at more than one and ive seen it everywhere. I mean if I worked at a minimum of 2 restaurants and I have seen expiration stickers changed, you can extrapolate that to the whole contry you end up with millions of restaurants serving expired food that we pay for. I promise you underpaid under appreciated cooks dont give a damn about the people they are feeding, especially when managers are not around. Here's a joke, "What happens when the 5 second rule is up?" GO to the 10 second rule!
What am I supposed to get from this really big, blurry picture of nothing?
@MisterE: You mean other than the fact it was a pre-packaged slice of pie that came from Burger King?
@Jack Doyle: Those Hershey Sundae pies are amazing. Deadly even before expiration, but deliciously amazing all the same.
I can't read any of the label text--is this an expiration date or a suggested use before date, and is it under any government regulations or is it just Burger King's own freshness dating to enhance the belief that these are hot off of the presses?
My guess is that it's the second in both cases, which means that nobody other than the customers and Burger King would care, and the local Burger King clearly doesn't care. It does rather make a mockery of the intent of the sticker, of course, which is something customers might like to know, but if I'm guessing correctly about the actual sticker meaning, it doesn't actually mean that the food has hit an unconsumable dropoff.
@MisterE: A lot of these fast food products contain MSG (or ingredients with a high amount of free glutamate, such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein or autolyzed yeast extract), which has the effect of blocking signals to the brain that tells you that "this food is rotten". It's an ingenious preservative; you could be eating tainted food without really tasting anything "off".
Although, your comment reminds me of the joke where two cannibals are eating a clown and one says to the other, "does this taste funny to you?".
nl2br is nobody's friend.
That was painful to read. Actually, I didn't. I just gathered the gist of the post from the translation by Consumerist.com.
Someone's a little too into Monty Python. Just write in PLAIN ENGLISH, please. And take better photos.
@Voyou_Charmant: The OP should try the pie in suppository form. That is the nicest way I can say it.
@Voyou_Charmant: Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
This was my _first_ thought.
Sort of an Occam's razor thing.
My first thought was just a reuse of packaging. And really I can't even tell that's a pie let alone a date from that pic... hope he's still got it if he wants to try a claim or anything.
"...little sounds more disgusting than fast food pie after its expiration date."
Oooh! Oooh! I have one! Fast food pie .... period!
@fenrisulfr: I've worked at enough restaurants to never eat out at all anymore. Seriously, I haven't been to a restaurant in about 3 years. Saves a lot of coin, plus you don't have to worry about what was done to your food that you didn't see.
Yes, things like this ARE the norm, whether you want to believe it or not. No one that works there gives a shit about their jobs, that's why they're there in the first place.
@Ayanami: Have you worked in a canning plant or on a farm? If so you'll probably decide you don't want to eat anymore, period.
@MisterE: Did the pie have shifty eyes?...you should always be looking for the shifty eyes, that means they're evil.
Those dates aren't necessarily "expiration dates" in the grocery store sense - they may be freshness dates as per Burger King's operating standards. When I worked in fast food (Arby's and A&W), there were plenty of out dates that didn't make sense as far as to how long you could keep something - like a contained refrigerated portion of sliced deli meat could only be kept for 36 - 48 hours (depending on the meat) - I imagine that people keep deli meat beyond that in their own refridgerators, but it was the operational standard set by the company, not the health deptartment.
Not to say that this is the case, but it is possible, and not to say it still wasn't good business practice, you may also want to contact burger king corporate or the franchise owner (I'm not sure how/if they do franchising) something like that if they aren't violating the health code, but are violating the corporate policy - they might be in a position to lose franchising license, or at least have a thorough inspection by a higher up than the store manager to get things into shape.
I didn't know Apu worked at Burger King.