On the evening of September 20, a social media user claiming to be a McDonald's employee filed a formal complaint against a operations supervisor in Beijing's Tongzhou district. The individual accused supervisor Chen of severely violating food safety regulations by using managerial authority to redirect milkshake-specific milk base, near its expiration date, from the Jiukeshu restaurant in Tongzhou to other locations not authorized to sell milkshakes. The redirected product was then reportedly sold as standard soft-serve ice cream mix.
The complainant stated that the formulation of the milkshake mix is incompatible with standard soft-serve mix, and mixing the two could cause machine freezing failures and equipment breakdowns. Multiple customers have reportedly complained about ice cream with an overly thin texture, creating a risk of customer grievances.
To conceal the fact that the near-expiry milk base was not discarded and was transferred between stores, the whistleblower alleges that Chen privately authorized the tampering of FOB loss records. This included modifying shelf-life data for semi-finished products and rewriting historical waste-disposal logs to bypass the required procedure for discarding soon-to-expire ingredients, constituting a complete pattern of data falsification.
The complaint further claims that the receiving outlets have a long-standing practice of selling near-expired or expired milk base without following standard disposal protocols, which severely violates McDonald's food safety operation guidelines. Additionally, the whistleblower asserted that transportation of the milkshake mix was carried out using ordinary passenger vehicles lacking refrigeration certification, or via courier services. During August's hot weather, this posed a high risk of contamination or spoilage during transit.
The complainant emphasized that the actions described—privately altering semi-finished product formulas, falsifying food safety logs, and illegally redirecting near-expiry food ingredients—constitute serious misconduct explicitly defined in the McDonald's employee handbook. These actions also breach requirements under the Food Safety Law and present major food safety hazards.
As of the time of report, McDonald's official channels had not responded to the allegations. However, store-level representatives denied the claims, stating that the reported content is not accurate. When pressed further by journalists, a store manager stated only that the issue would be documented and forwarded to dedicated personnel for handling.