| Kippreport.com

Questionable quality: tackling the region’s food service industry

January 17, 2012 4:22 by Precious de Leon

This Sunday, Kipp published an open letter to the Pizza Hut UAE management from a Kipp reader who had a bad experience ordering a combo meal at one of the chain’s branches.

This prompted some of our other readers to share some similar experiences.

One commenter, Mandarin, agreed with the open letter in terms of Pizza Hut’s ‘questionable’ value for money meals. They said:

“Pizza Hut– a major offender… tried their tandoori chicken special on a wednesday — so no excuse of weekend rush!!!! One morsel of chicken for every slice— truly value for money (sic)”

Another reader, Jeena, shared a couple of photos that are enough to put you off coffee for a while. The photos were of her Starbucks coffee, which had a little extra ingredient of hair in it.

Although the photographs were taken two years ago, it’s still proves that quality control and service still has a long way to go in the region.

Jeena said:

Yes, it’s really sad to see the quality of food decline rapidly. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve step out to indulge in a guilty pleasure, only to get stale and sometimes cold food. But who can you complain to? Managers rarely ever put customer satisfaction before company policy.

Here are the photos, taken by our reader, Jeena:

And here’s a close up:

Another commenter shared his frustration with a couple of chains. John J said he was “fooled big time” by the image in advertisements. He ordered the Shrimp Meal at KFC, which advertised large shrimps, and got what he described as “tiny 2-3cm shrimps”.

John J also shares a recent disappointment at the order size of Olivenos, a new offer at Burger King, which he says was no bigger than a one dirham coin.

This reminds Kipp of a video floating around in Youtube of a food make-up artist, showing how to make food look good on camera. You’ll see in the video below that it looks good but toxic to eat.

Have you had any bad experiences with service and products at fastfood, food service and restaurants recently? Share your stories in the comments section below, on our Facebook page, on Twitter or at [email protected]

Tags: advertisement., Burger King, fastfood, food artist, gcc, KFC, make up, McDonald’s, pizza hut, portion, service, size, UAE