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Many of us like to go for a cheeky meal at a fast food restaurant every now and then. It’s quick. It’s cheap—or it used to be anyway. Few of us probably have any illusions about the nutrition we’re (not) getting. But it’s not unfair to demand a certain level of quality on the plate and in the kitchen.
Recently, internet user u/n0tter sparked an interesting discussion on r/AskReddit. In the viral thread, real-life fast food workers spilled the beans about which menu items everyone should avoid ordering. Scroll down to read about their experiences and opinions. Just… make sure you’re not snacking while you read.
Any “sandwich” from Starbucks. No, we don’t make anything in house. It’s shipped out to us frozen and we just reheat it in the oven for you $$$.
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If you have peanut allergies, don’t get drinks from Sonic. They do not care about cross contamination AT ALL.
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The ice machine. They don’t get cleaned as often as you’d hope.
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No matter what business in the food industry you own—whether a food truck, fast food joint, a family-friendly chain, or an upscale restaurant—the same basics apply. For starters, you want to make sure that your hygiene standards are high and consistently maintained.
The last thing you want is for your customers to fall ill because someone didn’t wash their hands, stored and labeled the ingredients improperly, or ignored other cleanliness protocols. It’s awful to do that to your customers, and it can ruin their health or even cost them their lives. It’s incredibly bad for business and reputation. And it might cost someone their job, too. Your customers deserve better than to eat bad food at a high price.
Worked CircleK for 3 years – coffee is surprisingly good and machines were well maintained, but the cappuccino/iced coffee machine was disgusting and impossible to clean despite best efforts (lots of tiny parts where powdered drink mix could sit and rot). My location was next to a university and we had a regular who was an engineering professor, once he came in and watched while I was trying to clean the cappuccino machine, and said he should use it in class as an example of poor design.
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My brother worked at Subway in the early 00s. He told me to never eat the tuna and to not ask him why. I’d never had one to that point, and still have not.
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Sbux barista here, do not get any iced oleato drinks. It just doesn’t work and olive oil in coffee was already a big stretch. The hot latte is actually not too bad and tastes a little bit like Cheerios but the oil almost instantly separates from the rest of the drink when it’s iced, which is no bueno.
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Pathogens—from bacteria and viruses to fungi—can make us sick. They thrive on some food items more than others. For example, they quickly multiply in raw chicken, seafood, raw eggs, unpasteurized milk, and raw flour, among others. These need to be stored and labeled properly and precisely — otherwise, you’re risking someone’s health. On the other hand, when working with ingredients like crackers, lemons, or pickles, you have far more flexibility because they spoil slower.
Proper restaurants have their own checklists when it comes to keeping the kitchen and front-of-house clean. It’s really important to follow those protocols to the letter because they set out what needs to be cleaned daily, weekly, and monthly. For instance, you should aim to clean the sinks, food preparation areas, storage areas, and walk-in fridges and mop the floors every day. On top of that, your daily tasks will probably include taking out the trash and cleaning the appliances.
KFC
burgers are bad
only get buckets from KFC, nothing else.
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At dunkin, I’d say everything is fine except frozen drinks made with the old island oasis machine. My store now has a vitamix blender, but the old machine was never cleaned well enough.
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If you go to a McDonald’s that has a shake machine that is always working, don’t get a shake there. If you go to one that is always “broken,” it’s perfectly safe to get a shake there. The reason the machine is down so often is because it has a really long cleaning cycle that needs to be done frequently.
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Thoroughly cleaning the entire restaurant might consume a lot of time, but without these standards, there won’t be any customers, no business, and no jobs. That being said, managers really need to make sure that their employees are motivated to keep the place clean. They ought to find ways to incentivize them and show that their actions really do matter.
Have you ever worked at a fast food chain before, dear Pandas? If so, what was your experience like? What menu items did you think it was best to avoid? On the flip side, what food items did you genuinely think were pretty good? Tell us all about it in the comments.
Don’t get iced tea from Taco Bell. The inside of the canister at my Taco Bell would always have a thick, tissue-y brown film all around it. My Taco Bell was actually cleaner than your average Taco Bell, but it was really easy to get away with not cleaning that thing, or otherwise just forget to.
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I worked at Chuck E Cheese years ago and while the pizza was good & safe (its pretty tough to screw up pizza) but the salad bar would be a pass.
Adults and kids would just toss the tongs and spoons all over the salad bar, letting the handles fall into the food, getting all the different vegetables and dressings mixed together. All this at one of the grossest places on earth where they are putting their hands all over video games, the ball pit, pizza, and around again.
At the end of the night then we would flip all of the salad bar vegetables over into fresh containers and top them off for the next day. They did get thrown out every few days. If employees ever made ourselves a salad we would make it from the ingredients in the fridge that were not yet out on the Bacteria Bar.
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I don’t work in fast food but I have a buddy who fixes and services fountain soda machines. Never ever drink fountain soda. The hoses that the syrup runs through are never cleaned and rarely changed. He says they are stained and/or have mold. My buddy says the insides of fountain soda machines are usually disgusting.
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At little caesars, normal crust is made in store. Make our own dough and everything. But if you order a thin crust, you get a premade crust that may have been sitting in an open cardboard box for days to weeks.
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Kids packs at movie theaters are a waste of money and the employee will hate you for making them put it together. Just get a regular popcorn, candy, and soda for your kids to share.
My second tip is: sneak food into movie theaters and don’t buy anything.
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Tim Hortons— anything with whipped topping. It’s just this nasty oily stuff from a bag.
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Anything with strawberry caramel or chocolate (drizzle?) at Culver’s
I worked with a girl at a movie theater who was talking about how they used the same dispensers for their drizzles that we used for our butter.
At the end of every day we deconstructed the entire machine and cleaned it with a degreaser cause hot butter tends to get places. She said that she didn’t know you had to clean them because at Culver’s those machines were never cleaned and not even the manager was trained on how to do it.
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Stop ordering lemons in your water at s****y restaurants. I worked at one nice restaurant where this wasn’t the case… but I can’t recommend it at your average places.
The lemons that we cut come in large boxes with probably something like 100 lemons in it. Probably every other box had moldy lemons and entire corners of the boxes covered in mold. When cutting lemons we were told to just not use any ends with the molds directly on them.
There a good chance you’re putting lemons in your water that were in direct contact with mold or were partly covered in mold.
>! Of the places I worked, the biggest offender was BY FAR ihop !
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Anything from Tim Hortons. Workers get in trouble for throwing out expired product. Workers are encouraged to lie when doing temperature checks. Workers are advised to do a ‘sniff test’ on expired product. Workers are discouraged from investigating where mould is coming from and told to just clean up the visual.
ETA: I realize this is not the case everywhere, and I’m glad. For me however, this was the case at several locations, throughout 2 different cities.
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Taco bell worker here, I would not go here if u are strictly vegetarian/vegan- there are plenty of non meat options but the cross contamination is everywhere.
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A buddy repaired commercial appliances, he had a special hatred of Jack in the Box for any grilled chicken option.
They microwave them to order and he said their cleaning standards are the most disgusting of and fast food chain. That wasn’t based on one location either but dozens in the area.
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I worked at Steak ‘n’ Shake and Burger King 10 years ago. Everything was on the level over there.
My brother, however, around that same time, worked at Arby’s and told me that other workers would regularly drop roast beef on the ground, pick it up, and still put it on the sandwich to serve.
Given that that’s their signature item, I say just avoid the entire restaurant lol.
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I worked at Jimmy John’s for almost 7 years and they are obsessive about keeping things clean, to the point they go through a 8ish page packet of cleaning lists each day and all food items are super fresh and labeled to be used within 24-72 hours. The only thing I would not eat from there is the bacon because it comes cold and it’s just kind of unpleasant lol.
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I worked at chipotle in 2019. At that time, everything was fresh and I always trusted it (right after opening, the meat is usually left over from the night before but it was still good and I personally didn’t think that was a bad policy as it reduced food waste). We would clean the restaurant top to bottom corner to corner every single night.
Post Covid, I wouldn’t eat anything from there. Nothing is ever clean anymore and I know from others who still work there that their standards have significantly declined. Absolutely disgusting for increased prices, decreased quality, and smaller portions.
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Mushrooms on pizza. They often times would still have the “fertilizer” attached to them. Not everyone is willing to cut that off.
It’s been a really long time since I worked there, but the Taco Bell green sauce was pretty disgusting and usually pretty old. Also, don’t look too closely at the beef. It has tubes in it (who knows what parts ground up in there).
Worked at Krispy Kreme for 2 years.
Just so you know, the doughnuts are absolutely fresh- brought in twice a day.
Don’t order any of the Coffee Bean drinks, though- they never*ever*change the ice chest.
Edit: Doughnuts are most fresh at 6 am and 3 pm; least fresh at 2pm & 10pm.
I used to work at a froyo shop. If you see a topping and think “I’ve never thought of that being a topping for froyo,” you probably aren’t alone. Things like fruity pebbles were just put back out every morning getting older and older because no one ate them.
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I’m not a fast food worker, but between 2006-2012 I worked on site doing some IT and cable management and some tasks required me to get on top of the kitchen thingy you know, the styrofoam interlining (pardon my ESL) the thing is, while i was working there between the roof and the boards, on every site, most of the time a lot of microscopical very toxic fiberglass fibers were floating and raining on top of the salads, and nobody said nothing, very toxic, indeed, and never ever they paid attention to me even after I reported the issue to the managers, everytime I was dismissed, they said “oh, we cannot stop serving salads just because you’re up there” so there you go, incredible. now go and check what does fiberglass ingestion does to your body, at least it wasn’t breathing it haha.
Idk about other Panera’s, but the one i worked at ALWAYS had unripe avocados. Unless it was the heat of summer, in which they were heat damaged because they don’t let the ac be more than 20⁰ below the outside temp (it’s been 90’s around me for the last week!!).
They don’t have them anymore but when I worked at Arbys the Arby-Q was the one thing I would never eat. that sauce would sometimes be 2 months old I’m not kidding. Whenever I handed an order to a customer who ordered one I would say “here you go!” not “enjoy your food!”.
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Ex GM at Chipotle. I eat literally anything but the barbacoa and carnitas are made off site and come in a bag. Depending on your local Chipotle this could be good or bad. Once had a snake in our lettuce. Guess it was fresh. However, I haven’t been there since they added all the new fangled proteins. Quality has been inversely correlated to the number of stores.
Worked at a Bojangles. I didn’t notice much issues with the ice, but I know in general that ice machines are an issue.
Chicken. For being a fried chicken place, the fresh fried chicken, I’d avoid that. The tenders, supremes, and Cajun filet are all fine, those are frozen and just fried. But the legs, wings, breasts, thighs, those come fresh raw, and get marinated. The issue is, sometimes the store orders too much. Maybe you plan for that Friday night football game that got rained out and now you didn’t have that influx of people. Or, you didn’t plan enough for Sunday, because it’s the summer and families are spending their time at the beach, but it rained and their plans got rained out and they all came to Bojangles for a tailgate special. So you ran out, panicked, over-ordered the next week and it’s sitting in the cooler.
I’ve seen green chicken. We’ve fried up green chicken. We’ve feared getting written up if we refused to serve it and if we did something that would cause it to get thrown out. The above issues, those happen. You order enough to prepare, but you can’t prepare for every issue. That’s why you’re allowed to waste food. Throw it away, it went bad. Heck, you might even be able to argue that it went bad from the vendor and you didn’t realize it until you opened the box. But instead everybody is afraid of losing their job, from the crew member to the manager, that it’s easier to just cook and serve it (and maybe serve it at a discount as a manager’s special).
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Worked at a chain coffee shop with a type of Reindeer as its mascot.
Bakery items are designed to be dry in order to get you to buy coffee and the coolers are overly sugary.
However, the coffee is legit. If there is anything else on the drip menu besides regular Caribou Blend, get that one instead as it has less acid and is better roasted than most other coffee shops.
Also the mochas use regular Caribou Blend Coffee as the espresso. It’s not a trade secret, but the acidity is what blends the chocolate to create that unique mocha taste.
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Worked at a "fancy" sandwich spot in a really expensive area called Ike's Love & Sandwiches, our manager chose not to restock the premium pastrami that was twice as much and made us sell the normal one at the premium price. Also made us use extremely freezerburned s**t that had been lost to time in the back of the freezer, the vegan fried chicken was especially bad with this. Also some of our ingredients in general weren't much better than an average sandwich spot (big exception of our spiced mayo we mixed ourselves that honestly slapped). There were so many more issues I ended up walking out without notice after a particularly bad week from the manager (the breaking point was him playing favorites with tip payouts), basically avoid places that claim to be nice but don't seem to back it up.
Also even though I namedropped them I will rep the chain regardless by saying the location I trained in at first seemed much better than the one I was hired to, it seemed like it was a manager issue as well as a failure from corporate to properly evaluate individual locations.
Edit: Got a lot of comments asking about the mayo so here's a post from a disgruntled manager lol.
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I used to work at a Papa John’s, and it’s not a health reason to avoid things, but generally: avoid going overboard on toppings.
There’s a chart for how much of each topping gets used based on how many toppings are on the pizza, and it gets smaller as the number of toppings go up. Once you hit 3 toppings, you’re basically paying $1 more to get half of each topping just to get the extra topping. IIRC a triple pepperoni pizza has less pepperoni on it than a double, for instance.
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Chick fil a worker – I would honestly say the food is pretty safe, it’s all made back there minus the soups.
However the drinks on the other hand, it’s financially smarter to just go to the gas station and get yourself a fountain drink than pay $2 for a large co*ke that is half the size of a large at McDonald’s.
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Extra fruit topping or chocolate sauce in a DQ Blizzard. It’s going to be runny and overpower the ice cream.
Having worked in a theatre, never order popcorn if you’re going to the first showing of the day. The theatres will make popcorn the previous night, bag it, and put it into the popcorn machine the next day. The popcorn will usually be fresh by the later showings, but early morning it’s going to be old and reheated.
As a former worker at a popular fast food chain, I would always tell my friends to avoid salads. Yes, it sounds contradictory because you would think it is the healthiest option, but in reality, salads are usually the least fresh on the menu. Vegetables are often prepared in large batches and can be stored for days before being served.
Smoothie king- anything with bananas tbh. They use very overripe bananas, like straight liquid out of the peel sometimes, definitely saw some with maggots (I’d throw those out, but don’t let the penny pinching franchise owner see ya do it)
They use overripe bananas because the sugar fermentation enhances the natural sweetness and flavor. But there would always be some that were WAY over.
I used to work in the kitchen at a BSA Summer camp, and I learned something that might apply to other food establishments. If you see a food truck restocking the inventory, you may think that the food you’re eating is completely fresh. Wrong, you’re eating what stayed in the food lockers the longest, to make room for the new stock.
Panera Bread. Their soups, and their mac and cheese- AVOID. It’s frozen in sealed plastic bags and then placed in a vat of hot water to keep it warm. Talk about leaching PFAS and BPAs- if you’re in California there’s Prop 65 (reproductive health, cancer, birth defect warnings) posted about their food in the building. If you want to lower your sperm count, go for it.
McDonalds decaf coffee, we don’t change it regularly like all the other coffees and the lemonade.
Dairy Queen Oh dear lord-DO NOT EAT
THE “DAIRY” off-white stuff. My manager had a bucket under the place we drew the “ice cream” from the frozen mixer for any extra that fell off.
He would then take the bucket and pour it back into the mixer so often (once being too often) that the “dairy” turned yellow.
PLEASE, for your own safety, stay away from DQ.
Ever wonder why it’s not called Dairy Queen but DQ now? NO DAIRY involved.
Not sure if it counts, but my partner worked at Sam’s Club for less than a week. And in that time they came to the horrifying realization of how bad their sanitation practices are especially when it comes to the rotisserie chickens. People not washing hands, handling the chicken while sick, etc.
We have never purchased a rotisserie chicken since.
Also they left that job after a week because Sam’s were using *floor cleaner* to clean their coats and aprons, which made my partner break out in a horrible rash.
I haven’t worked there in awhile but don’t eat pastries from a Starbucks case when the weather is warm. If they have display pastries and pull yours from the fridge you’re good but don’t eat the ones in the case. Guarantee a fruit fly has been on it.
Worked at Baskin-Robbins for a while. The hot fudge and caramel had mold growing on the outside, where the hot water sits. Never got cleaned by anyone but me.
Don’t eat in any restaurant where all the ketchup bottles are always full.
They are just topping them off every shift, and the ketchup on the bottom had been there for a hundred years.
Costco samples. I used to work there. The dishes are hand washed and never clean. The people that hand out the food do not abide by health rules. Food is touched by dirty hands before it gets to the trays. You do not want to eat these samples.
Pizza joint cook here. Mellow Mushroom (at least the one I worked at) has some of the best food safety standards in any restaurant I worked at. Fresh ingredients and overall good food safety routine. That being said, anything with the chicken you can probably pass on. It’s not unsafe, but it comes in pre cooked and is just, kinda… weird. Not great texture and has a very processed taste for how fresh the rest of out ingredients are.
If you are set on chicken I suggest getting teriyaki or herb vinegarette chicken. It tastes great that way.
I worked at Wawa for 6 yrs.
Everyone raves it’s the best, I am here to burst that pulsating bubble for yall-
Few things:
1. The freestyle/ self-serve fountain soda machines do not get cleaned ever. I cleaned them out o e night, and it was vile, to say the least. Slimy looked like a hairball, and the smell I about fkn puked. I never drank out of them again.
2. All food you order in the deli? Every other night is delivery. Every time I opened a package of Turkey/Ham etc. the smell of mass processing smells like farts from a rotting corpse. Toaster ovens don’t get cleaned, so there’s “FŁaVọŘ” added to anything you want toasted. Knives to cut the not so great sandwiches are dropped on the floor. They simply dunk those in sanitizer water and dry it off.
Those so-called “Paninis” aren’t pressed at all. They literally come frozen with the grill lines on them.
Those sizzlis in the warmer by the register usually? Yeah, people open the boxes and touch the food. Then, put it right back. Always request it fresh if you must go.
I was fired after going through Cancer treatments because my body just couldn’t do it anymore.
It’s been a minute since I worked at one but never get the Domino’s ExtravaganZZa – we used to just take the toppings that fell into the catchpans (we called it the pit) below the makeline and use that first; while it’s clean it’s usually pretty slimy because the catchpans aren’t refrigerated like the food storage. One pit pie, comin up!
Edit: I worked at a franchise doing this in the late 90s – we would police the pit for bigger toppings to put back in their bins but we would most definitely scrape up the small “leavings” with the cheese and use that as an underlayer for those pies. We never had to scrape ice out of the pit – just the bins where toppings were stored up top. “Pit pies” were taught to me by the franchisee (who is one of the brand’s largest now) when they were a regular fixture working in the store. Their stores would routinely pass inspection with flying colors and they were absolute sticklers about everything else (open drinks, mischief in the walk in, scrub everything at close) – I attribute the pit pies to food cost (something I learned they were harsh on when I was a key for them and did ordering).
I went to Church’s Chicken In NYC and when I asked for a cup of water with my meal (didn’t want to pay $3 for a small bottle) the cashier gave me this look like “*you do NOT want to drink our fountain water*” – so there’s that.
Einstein. Anything that goes inside a bagel. The dishes aren’t washed good with leftover food on them (id try to wash them better when I was working). Just buy the tub of cream cheese they sell and toast your bagel at home or get them to toast it and put cream cheese yourself.
Also the coffee is very weak.
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