Sickening discovery in meal costs restaurant chain millions
A customer’s sickening meal-time discovery has wiped $264 million off a restaurant chain’s sharemarket value.
Diners were eating hot pot, raw meat and vegetables cooked in boiling soup at the table, when they found an unexpected ingredient – a boiled rat.
Video shows chopsticks dipping into a thick red soup and retrieving the stiff, boiled body of a rat at a restaurant in China on September 6.
The diner uses the chopsticks to turn the rat from left to right, showing it’s outstretched arms and ropey tail covered in oily liquid.
The footage was captured at a branch of the restaurant chain Xiabu Xiabu, in the city of Weifang in the eastern province of Shandong.
The incident was reported by a local newspaper on Friday, as social media users shared the footage over the weekend according to the New York Times.
Xiabu Xiabu Catering Management, the chain’s parent company plummeted in value after the incident. Shares in the company fell by almost 12.5 per cent, wiping about $264 million off its market value, The New York Times reported.
The Market Supervision Bureau of Kuiwen district in Weifang confirmed that it had received a complaint about a rat in a meal through WeChat on Friday, the South China Morning Post reported.
Xiabu Xiabu released a statement on Saturday night saying that it valued food security and would make improvements.
The chain opened in 1998 and was listed on the Hong Kong market in 2014, with 759 shops across China.
