By Leroy Smith
The Popeyes fast-food Restaurant located at Water Street, Stabroek is refuting claims that the facility is operating under unhygienic conditions.
During a visit to the fast-food outlet at Water and America Streets in Georgetown on Friday, the News Room was given access to the kitchen area, storage facilities and other parts of the outlet. The access was granted following photographs which began circulating on social media that called the hygiene and sanitation at the facility into question.
Among the photographs which are being circulated on social media are images with utensils stacked up on the floor at the location, a clogged area where waste water is thrown after mopping of the facility, and a stockpile of frozen food.which according to our investigations, did not see anything out of sorts with the stockpiling of those items.
With the exception of an area inside the building where waste water is thrown after schedule cleaning of the restaurant and which carries a very high stench of backup sewerage, the restaurant appeared fairly clean. It must be noted, however, that the visit of the News Room to the location was a scheduled one which was arranged on Thursday.
“I can assure you that we try to keep the restaurant clean, however, there are times when we have cleaning going on like at the end of the 4 ‘O’ clock shift, every staff is required to clean before leaving and at the end of the 12 ‘O’ clock shift in the night, the restaurant should be cleaned as well” a Junior Manager at the facility, Trenessa Noel said.
In relation to the pictures, she said “If you’ve seen pictures, then I can reassure you those things are corrected daily. Dishes are not left dirty all night. Everywhere is mopped every day.”
We were told that the restaurant does not allow cooked food from the previous day to be served to customers on the following day and assured that those foods are discarded.
The Supervisor at the location explained that the photographs which are being circulated on social media have to do with images which were taken and uploaded by workers who were relieved from their duties because of poor performance on the job, fighting, stealing and ill-treatment of customers.
He outlined that there were instances where staffers of the facility were suspended or fired for ill-treatment of customers and subsequently placed photos on social media to tarnish the image of the establishment.
It was noticed that the staff do not wear gloves during the preparation of the food but was told that the gloves are only used in the making of sandwiches while a long arm utensil is issued to handle every other eatable that is served to customers.
(Visit our facebook page to see the videos of the outlet)
