You know how we all blindly trust big food brands? Like when you walk into Domino’s or KFC, you automatically think, “Okay, this must be clean.” Because it’s a big brand, right? We don’t even question it. But turns out, maybe we should.
Recently, FSSAI and state food safety teams raided some of the biggest food chains in India — Pizza Hut, Domino’s, KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s, Absolute Barbeque, and a few others. And what they found honestly made me feel disgusted. We’re talking reused oil, unclean kitchens, expired licences, and even veg and non-veg food stored together in the same place. Yeah, the same places we order from almost every weekend.
When the Cameras Turned to the Kitchens
It began with a single call, a complaint that food being served in certain popular outlets wasn’t as safe as advertised. But what officials found during those inspections didn’t just shake the industry; it shook the people eating from it.
Inside several branches of Domino’s and Pizza Hut, food-safety officers found reused oil, thick, dark, and burnt from being recycled again and again. Some outlets had no separation between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Same shelves. Same utensils. The kind of small negligence that turns into something big when it reaches your plate.
There were open bins near food preparation areas. Sauce bottles with no expiry dates. Pest-control logs are missing. Even expired licences still hang proudly near the cash counter, as if that single laminated sheet could still keep trust alive.
The Smell of Oil and Something Worse
In a few kitchens, the air smelled heavy, not of spices, but of negligence. The kind you can’t see, but once you notice, you can’t unsee. Oil was reused until it turned dark brown. Countertops are slick with old grease. Refrigerators stuffed with both meat and vegetables, their colours fading under flickering lights.
At Absolute Barbeque, a name that promises “the ultimate grill experience,” what they found instead was rotting fruits, beetle-filled flour, and raw food left open beside rat traps. Floors are sticky from days of neglect. Rodent droppings near the storage racks. It wasn’t a restaurant anymore; it was a scene straight out of something you wouldn’t even want to imagine.
The Day the Brands Stopped Looking Perfect
By the time inspectors reached the outlets of Burger King, KFC, and McDonald’s, the illusion had already cracked.
Thirty-six samples across twelve major restaurant chains failed the food-safety tests. Some had expired ingredients, others were mislabelled or unhygienically stored. None of this was happening in secret. It was happening right in front of us, under the glow of menu boards, next to self-ordering kiosks, behind smiling staff trained to say “Welcome!” even as they worked in kitchens that didn’t meet the standards they signed up for. It wasn’t about one city. It wasn’t about one outlet. It was about a pattern. About carelessness dressed up as consistency.
A Nation of Eaters, Suddenly Unsure
The news spread fast. Faster than their delivery promises. TV anchors shouted over each other, social media buzzed with outrage, hashtags trended: #UnsafeFood #FSSAIRaids. For the first time in a long time, people started looking at their food with suspicion. Parents stared at unopened pizza boxes with a different kind of fear. That extra cheese didn’t feel comforting anymore.
And in that moment, something cracked, not just in those kitchens, but in people’s minds. Because this wasn’t a story about food anymore. It was about faith. About the quiet trust we place in logos and brands. We never ask to see the kitchen. We just believe the illusion they sell us. Until the day someone walks in with a badge and says, “Show me what’s behind the counter.”
Inside the Corporate Silence
When the reports went public, most of these companies stayed silent. A few issued statements, the kind that sound clean and rehearsed: “We take food safety very seriously.” But that’s the thing about trust, once it’s cracked, it doesn’t sound the same, no matter how you patch it up.
In reality, no apology could scrub away the image of reused oil and expired sauces. No PR line could convince a mother that the burger her kid ate yesterday was safe. Because food is personal. You don’t just sell it; you build it on faith. And when that’s broken, you lose more than customers. You lose credibility.
The Truth Behind the Shiny Signs
You walk into these outlets, and everything looks perfect. The air smells clean. The uniforms are pressed. The lights are just the right shade of warm. But behind that illusion are people, overworked, underpaid, trying to meet insane deadlines while cutting corners to save time. Maybe they didn’t mean to. Maybe no one checked. Maybe everyone thought, “It’s fine, nothing will happen.” Until it did.
The FSSAI raids didn’t expose criminals. They exposed carelessness. The kind that creeps in slowly until it becomes routine. The kind that hides behind confidence and brand recognition. And the worst part? No one would’ve known if someone hadn’t looked.
The Taste of Complacency
When a local street vendor makes a hygiene mistake, we call it dangerous. When a multinational brand does it, we call it “an unfortunate oversight.” But food poisoning doesn’t care who cooked the meal. Cross-contamination doesn’t care if it came from a five-star kitchen or a roadside stall. The same spoiled oil, the same expired bread, the same neglect, all lead to the same end.
This isn’t just about one raid or a few dirty shelves. It’s about how easily we’ve let comfort replace caution. About how we stopped asking questions because we liked the answers too much. About how the idea of “brand trust” blinded us to what was right in front of us, a system that stopped caring as long as the orders kept coming in.
The Mirror We Refuse to Look At
Every time something like this happens, we all react the same way. Shock. Anger. A few memes. A few days later, everything goes back to normal. We ordered again. We scroll again. We forget again.
But maybe we shouldn’t this time. Maybe this time, we should remember that the problem isn’t just the brands, it’s us. We believe ads more than evidence. We let price decide what’s pure. We treat food like a product, not a promise.
The truth is, the FSSAI didn’t just raid restaurants. It challenged our assumptions that expensive means hygienic, that a brand name means safe, and that rules only apply to small shops. It forced us to confront the ugly reality that sometimes, even the food we trust the most is quietly betraying us.
What’s Left After the Dust Settles
After the inspections ended and the headlines moved on, the outlets reopened. The lights turned on again. The same smiles returned behind the counters. But for some of us, something changed. The next time we take a bite, there’s that tiny pause, that one second of doubt. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe that’s the start of awareness, the one thing that could stop another raid from being necessary. Because food safety shouldn’t need a scandal to matter. It should start in the kitchen. It should start with honesty. And if that sounds too ideal, maybe that says more about us than it does about them.
References
- The Times of India: “10 BBQ and 24 out of 55 popular pizza outlets in Hyderabad found selling rotten, unsafe & contaminated food.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
- NDTV: “Telangana Officials Flag Health Violations At Popular Pizza Chains.” https://www.ndtv.com
- NDTV Food: “Pizza Hut, Domino’s Branches In Telangana Found Flouting Food Safety Rules.” https://food.ndtv.com