Another “rat incident” has been viral on social media and this time it involves a popular donut chain located at MRT station.
The Fan Boy Seo reposted a 14-second video crediting a certain “Princess” (name redacted). It showed a rat lurking around a rack where donuts were stacked.
Many netizens expressed their disgust while some pointed out that the stall seemed to be closed. They speculated that the Mister Donut kiosk in the video was the one located at MRT Quezon Avenue station.
Meanwhile, others suspect that the video might be a “sabotage” attempt against the donut brand which has branches all over the Metro. Some noted that they use to love the doughnut but things might change after seeing it. One netizen also suggested that the person who took the video should have notified the crew of the donut kiosk.
Just last month, a branch of Starbucks in Mandaluyong is in hot waters after a customer complained that she found a creepy dead mouse inside her Starbucks coffee.
In a statement, Starbucks Philippines vowed to conduct an internal probe on the allegation.
“At Starbucks, we want every customer who visits our stores to have a positive experience. The safety of our customers is of theutmost importance, and we take our obligation to provide safe products seriously. We are taking our customer’s concerns seriously and are actively investigating her claim.”
Meanwhile, we have just received an official statement from Mister Donut on the controversial video showing a rodent infestation in one of the food franchise’s outlets:
Starting January 1, 2016, all MRT kiosks, including Mister Donut shops, were not given access permits to operate by MRT3-DOTC. The aforesaid access permit has always been issued by MRT3-DOTC on a monthly basis and this action of not issuing the access permit for January 2016 was a sudden directive from MRT3-DOTC and that even shop personnel were not allowed to retrieve items and goods.
Leftover Mister Donut products, which are normally picked-up the following day, were not allowed to be retrieved by MRT3-DOTC. Thus, when the said video was taken, the subject shop had been closed for more than a month and a half already. At that point, the shop was still off-limits to its personnel, even for cleaning. The MRT3-DOTC security personnel refused access to stall tenants’ shop personnel.
After the video broke out, the Mister Donut franchisee requested permission from MRT3-DOTC security personnel to retrieve the leftover donuts and to clean the shop citing pest infiltration but his request was denied by the station supervisor of MRT3-DOTC. It was only after several appeals and explanation, that pest infiltration might affect the train passengers, permission was granted. However, the permission granted by the MRT3-DOTC security personnel was only for the retrieval of the left-over donuts and did not allow cleaning of the shop or removal of signage/logos.
We are told that to date, all shops in the MRT stations remain closed and the issue on the issuance of access permits is pending with MRT3-DOTC.
While Mister Donut holds its franchisees to the highest standards of quality, however, we were unable to require strict compliance because of the situation above-described. Undoubtedly, the video, made possible only by the peculiar circumstances, unjustly damages our brand.
We hope that the video can be viewed in this context.
Respectfully yours,
Mister Donut Philippines Management
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