Highlights:
A video of an unannounced visit to McDonald’s exposed a number of food safety problems. But it’s not the food itself that makes consumers angry, it’s the indifference of McDonald’s employees. The employee bluntly said, “It doesn’t matter if the food is rotten, it’s not for me to eat anyway.”
In the past three years, McDonald’s has received nearly 2,000 complaints on China’s Black Cat complaint platform, most of which are related to food safety. Recently, there have been reports of bloody chicken wings and deep-fried flies.
A food analyst pointed out that although this is the personal behavior of employees, it also reflects the loopholes in the management system of McDonald’s, and the comprehensive quality of employees does not match the rules and regulations of the company. If the store manager takes the revenue profit as the assessment standard, the hygiene details are bound to be a hidden problem.
Lettuce blackened, bread sold out of date, chicken wings with blood, fried flies…
It may be hard for you to imagine that these above-mentioned dark words are related to McDonald’s, which, in turn, is a little-known side of this restaurant company. In the past three years, McDonald’s accumulated complaints on the Black Cat complaint platform reached nearly 2,000, most of which are related to food safety.
A recent video of an unannounced visit to a McDonald’s store pointed out that there were problems such as vegetables, chicken and bread being used past their expiration dates, and milk batter leaking for three days and continuing to be made.
After the incident, McDonald’s official Weibo post said: “Thanks for the supervision, we are learning about the situation of this restaurant in the video and verifying it. We have asked the general managers of all restaurants nationwide to verify the food safety landing again.”
The constant public skepticism about McDonald’s food safety has not affected its wild ride in the Chinese market in any way. On the 8th of this month, McDonald’s just opened its new China headquarters, and as of June this year, its total number of restaurants in China has exceeded 4,000, now moving toward the goal of opening more than 5,000 new restaurants this year.
“It doesn’t matter, it’s not me eating it anyway”
“McDonald’s, one of the world’s largest fast food chains, has set a series of strict standards for food safety in its official website, from agricultural planting and breeding, to factory production and processing, to a strict supplier management system, and very strict requirements for its stores. But these so-called standards, and can they really be enforced? ”
The unannounced video begins this way, pointing directly to McDonald’s store management problems.
According to the introduction, McDonald’s chicken ingredients label has three kinds, respectively, thawing time, available time, expiration time. According to the unannounced video, when the chicken is thawed, it shows that it is due today, but if it is not used up today, it is then saved, and the date needs to be changed.
McDonald’s star product, McSpicy Chicken Thigh Burger, consists of bread, chicken and vegetables, and is said to sell six of them every second. But in the video, the lettuce used to make the burger was already blackened, and the store employee even said, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t eat it anyway.
In the meat section, when the McDonald’s chicken thawed to show today’s expiration, but if not used up today, then save, as for the date needs to be changed. Bread also faces the same problem, after the expiration of the thawing of expired bread, and not be thrown away.
Various phenomena are far from the public’s image of McDonald’s FMCG food safety benchmark.
However, some consumers also said that “expired does not mean spoiled”. In fact, in the restaurant industry, some expired food usually represents a change in taste and flavor, but not necessarily harmful to the body. Some time ago, the well-known chain of tea beverage brand Tea Baidao, was also exposed to the use of expired pearls. The person in charge of the tea Baidao revealed, “mainly because our bosses in pursuit of the best taste and flavor, the development of room temperature 3 hours time standard, but in fact, the shelf life of the pearl is very long”.
People in the catering industry also lamented, “The catering industry so that employees really have to follow the operation manual to implement, it is really too difficult too difficult.”
What made consumers angry in the McDonald’s incident was not only the food itself, but the attitude of McDonald’s store employees towards food safety and the system.
For example, in the vegetable section, although the McDonald’s back kitchen has set up a timing table to control the freshness of vegetables, but in practice, when the unannounced user asked the store staff whether they need to dial, the staff asked “is not this just a display?” He also introduced himself as “not even touched” this dial. When asked whether to replace the vegetables according to the dial standard, the employee said bluntly: “I would like to change, but what about the cost? I dumped all is okay, but the boss does not let, all restaurants are like this.”
Some customers say they recently ate “fried flies” in McDonald’s
In fact, the above video is by no means an isolated case. On the Black Cat complaint platform, from October 2018 to the present, consumers’ complaints against Black Cat have accumulated to 1,853.
In the past 30 days alone, there were 65 complaints about McDonald’s on the platform. A consumer reported on the evening of the 19th of this month that the apple slices of the McDonald’s children’s package purchased showed signs of oxidation, and later checked the production date and shelf life to find that the product had expired. McDonald’s has not yet given feedback on the consumer’s complaint.
According to the information of Black Cat complaint, recently, some consumers also ate bloody chicken wings and fried flies in McDonald’s stores. In contrast to the ongoing food safety problems in offline stores, McDonald’s has been expanding its market scale.
On October 8, McDonald’s China officially opened its new headquarters building. Its China CEO Zhang Jiayin said in a media interview that McDonald’s will realize its 4,500-store plan for the Chinese market ahead of schedule, “expected to be realized in the first quarter of 2022. In the second quarter of this year, same-store sales in McDonald’s international franchise market segment increased 32 percent, driven by growth performance in Brazil, Japan and China.
Which is more important, food safety or revenue?
It is worth noting that McDonald’s frequent food safety issues are a reflection of the brand’s current plight.
In recent years, the rapid development of Chinese restaurant chains, the country’s health awareness has also increased, McDonald’s, KFC and other fast food is often used as a representative of junk food.
“20 years ago, KFC, McDonald’s, are shopping malls begging to be stationed. Now the resident merchants are sometimes rejected because the merchants will feel that the brand is too low, pulling down the mall’s class.” Industry insiders said bluntly.
As a world-renowned fast food brand, McDonald’s daily customer traffic is very huge. In the past, the opening of a McDonald’s was able to bring huge popularity to the area. McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Ikea, etc. can attract traffic to the area, and therefore malls will give these brands larger discounts on stores, and McDonald’s can often lease or buy a lot of prime stores and land at a cheaper price.
This part of the advantage has contributed to the invisible fixed assets of McDonald’s, so much so that McDonald’s was once called the “invisible real estate company”. In fact, McDonald’s main income comes from the rental model, royalties, franchise fees and so on. Its 2021 interim report shows that the rental model contributes 55% of the main business pre-tax profit, which is the main source of profit for McDonald’s.
In other words, the restaurant company’s main source of profit is not selling chicken leg burgers, but rentals. McDonald’s obtains premium properties through long-term lease renewals and outright purchases, and then subleases them to franchisees as a way to make a profit.
According to public information, since CITIC accepted McDonald’s in 2017, McDonald’s has set a “five-year plan” to increase the number of restaurants in mainland China from 2,500 to 4,500, increase the rate of opening new restaurants from 250 per year to 500 per year, and start a major sinking, so that by the end of 2022, about 45% of By the end of 2022, about 45% of McDonald’s restaurants will be located in third and fourth-tier cities.
Some users have questioned whether they can maintain a good quality management system behind the big expansion.
Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese food industry analyst, believes that the core of the above problems at McDonald’s may still be the behavior of individual employees, and the quality of employees determines the degree of implementation of the standardization and process of the entire quality internal control system.
He points out that the comprehensive quality of the employees does not match the rules and regulations of the company, nor is it entirely the responsibility of the employees. If the company takes food safety as the first major assessment weight of the store, then the whole behavior pattern and thinking pattern from the general manager to the store staff will take food safety as the criterion, and if the assessment of the store manager is revenue profit oriented, and the employees take the piecework, time and other operational indicators as the assessment, then the hygiene details of the store is definitely not done well. Source