Is Fast Food Trying to be, Too Fast?
Recently my wife and I purchased two Popeyes Chicken Sandwiches and took them back home to eat. While I started eating mine, my wife said something didn’t taste right with her sandwich. She immediately ran over to the kitchen trash can and spit out what she had in her mouth. The last time she did that I had cooked dinner. (ha ha) I then took a knife and cut a straight edge into her sandwich seeing the sandwich was way under cooked showing raw chicken!
First, I have to state that this blog is off topic from my usual UFO related blogs, but I guess I could tie that in by saying, if you ever have a chance to eat an alien, they might taste like chicken.
Second, I have to tress that the Popeyes store I bought the chicken from was really busy, long window lines, call-in orders, and people like me at the counter. They were really hustling and doing their best, but… there was a hole in the system and raw chicken sandwiches were getting sold.
I can’t tell you if my wife’s sandwich was the only raw one they sold that night, but I can say based on my perception of what was going on behind the counter, with the employees scrambling to fill orders, bumping into each other, that I’m guessing we weren’t the only ones to get uncooked chicken.
I did drive back to the store and showed the manager the uncooked sandwich in which she said, “Oh my God”, then yelled, “Stop the chicken sandwich line!”. She definitely was concerned and took charge of the situation. Another employee who saw the sandwich smiled and said, “Well you’re definitely going to get another sandwich”, in which I replied, “Uh.. no, I won’t be coming back to this store”, and I left.
When I went back home I thought, “How many people had already ate uncooked chicken sandwiches tonight from that location?” “This is a serious problem.”
A report from the (CSPI) Center for Science in the Public Interest, stated their researchers found that 44% of foodborne illness outbreaks were tied to restaurants, compared to 24% in which are from cooking at home.
That’s getting close to 50%, and something is defiantly wrong here.
So I decided to file a complaint on November 10th, at 9:26pm on the Popeyes complaint link on their website. The complaint was under:
Issue: In-Restaurant Issue – Food Quality (Illness/raw chicken)
Well it looks like selling raw chicken to customers in not a unique thing if they have tab for it on their website. Huh?
Well a Jessica with Popeyes responded to my complaint within minutes thanking me for reaching out and apologizing for the order experience. She stated,
“We do not take these cases lightly at Popeyes and can assure you that this has been raised to the appropriate Franchise, Operations, and Management teams to take the necessary actions to ensure this is remediated.”
Then the email stated they are unable to refund my order however as a gesture of goodwill they would like to offer me 500 Popeyes Rewards Points to my digital account. Of course I would have to sign up for a digital account to get the points.
Holy Shit! They’re trying to buy me off with reward points and I don’t even know at this time if my wife ate raw chicken and will be spending the rest of the night in the restroom. Ahhhh! And I’m guessing Jessica is not a real person but probably an AI chatbot so why am I wasting my time talking to a computer.
So obviously some Popeyes stores do sell some raw chicken sandwiches now and then to customers, and those that do complain, are happy with the 500 reward points while puking in the toilet, I guess.
Wikipedia: Popeyes is currently a subsidiary of Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International. As of 2021, Popeyes has 3,705 restaurants, which are located in more than 46 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 30 countries worldwide.
It’s nothing new that people get food positioning from restaurants and fast food businesses, it’s been hapenning for years. Matter of fact it happens so much that large restaurant chains appear to have an algorithm that figures in “attrition percentages” or how many of their customers will get sick per year from their restaurants. It’s probably figured into their budget with money put aside for law suites, attorney fees, and giving out 500 rewards points. Nice…
The CDC estimates 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year. Remember 44% of the 48 million who get sick are from foodborne illnesses tied to restaurants. That’s just over 21 million people!
As for our Popeyes Raw Chicken issue, my wife ended up not getting ill probably because she was quick to remove what she had in her mouth, but now this is a wake-up call for us to really inspect what we eat from fast food restaurants. Some nutritionists may say, “Well that’s what you get for eating there” but my wife and I really don’t care about their comments, we eat quite healthy on a weekly basis, but sometimes a Popeyes Chicken sandwich, or Big Mac or Whopper, just sounds good. What the hell, you only die once.
As for Popeyes, they said they would get back to me after the investigation but so far they haven’t. I’ll be surprised if they actually do. As for the 500 Popeyes Rewards points they offered me, well I can tell them where they can “stick” those points, but I definitely don’t blame the employees and this is why.
Before COVID, restaurant chains like this one were designed for mostly drive-throughs and walk-ins, and it’s no secret that most of these places put their drive-through orders on a higher priority than walk-ins because about 60-70% of their business is drive-throughs. Walk-ins will have to wait. Now they won’t come clean about this, but you can clearly see while you’re in the store on a busy day or night watching all the cars going through the drive through window while you’re standing there waiting and thinking, “Where the hell is my food!”
During COVID, restaurant chains were struggling to survive, their in house dining was closed, so they incorporated call-in orders and app orders to pick up the loss. Companies like Door Dash, Grubhub and Uber Eats will pick up the app orders for you if you decide not to drive to the restaurant. Now that COVID is over the call-in and app orders are still there along with drive through and walk-in business. So their business has increased a lot especially during rush hour times, but in reality their equipment like cookers, fryers and such has not been updated for the excess business, thus causing a bottle-neck in the kitchen.
This is a major issue.
The employees can’t keep up with the orders during the rush, they don’t want to upset their customers, so mistakes are made. These mistakes can ultimately cost someone their life, and yes people have died from eating restaurant food, just Google it.
Now back to Popeyes, I believe it’s a corporate issue which is pushing their employees to the limit and mistakes are being made. With our chicken sandwich there was no clear quality control sequence that could have caught the mistake they made. I saw no incompetent employees working that night, just workers busy as hell trying to survive the rush.
Ultimately you’ll have to be the quality control person for the food you eat at fast food places. If you walk in and notice the business is extremely busy, or the drive-through lines are way long, or the kitchen area is trashy, then maybe it’s best to go somewhere else. The employees will make mistakes, we all do, nobody is perfect and no restaurant is perfect.
As for going off topic on a UFO website talking about raw chicken sandwiches? Sometimes I like to vent on my blogs about things that trouble me in which I think other people should be aware of. We put way too much trust in the people who cook our food and also deliver the food to us.
On November 2nd, CBS reported that DoorDash is warning its customers that if you don’t add a tip, then you may face longer wait times for your food. And boy you better tip those drivers because who knows what they may do to your food if you don’t. Recently people on Reddit were sharing stories about their drivers cancelling orders, stealing food from their order, or purposely damaging the food and who knows what else?
Probably better to get your own food.
Well this is a UFO website so I need to get back on topic. Recently the Pentagon UFO chief stated someone is in our backyard, is it Aliens or a foreign power? I think if it’s a foreign power then it’s someone like Marvel’s Wakanda, a fictional country which harbors advanced technology; because UFO’s have been seen for centuries. Balls of light in which I’ve captured on camera are the same as the Foo Fighters our fighter pilots saw during WWII. But if it is aliens, one must wonder why they’re here.
Maybe we humans are the ones that taste like chicken.
Food for thought.
Category: The Z-Files
