Burger King in Germany found to have served out-of-date bacon, had mice infestations

Some Burger King restaurants in Germany have been shut down after they were found to have served out-of-date products, had mouse infestations, and cooked vegan patties in the same oil as chicken, according to a TV investigation.

In a Team Wallraff episode titled "Disgust, Exploitation, and Scandals," on German TV, undercover reporters worked at several Burger King restaurants in Germany, supplemented with interviews with former workers.

At a Burger King branch in Bernau bei Berlin, a reporter found that labels on containers of cheese, salad, sauce, and bacon indicated that products were approaching their expiry dates and needed to be thrown out. But staff simply replaced the labels with new expiry dates.

In addition, sauce bottles with expired contents were being topped up with new sauce without being emptied and washed in between, one reporter found.

For consumers to not notice, partially toasted stale burger buns were also given, some of which were a week past their expiration date, the undercover reporter claimed.

Customers were given bread buns that were three months old and had begun to mold, according to an unnamed former Burger King employee who worked there for many years.

According to the former employee, customers also reported experiencing stomach issues and attempting to return food because it appeared to be damaged in online reviews.

In Bernau bei Berlin, an undercover reporter discovered that occasionally employees handled food without washing their hands after coming inside from the outside and after touching the floor. They would also take fries and chicken nuggets from batches of food being served to customers with their soiled hands for their consumption.

The former employee claimed that staff members frequently kept cooking food with dirty hands and without wearing gloves after smoking, taking out the garbage, or even visiting the restroom.

The show also featured video footage shot by a worker in a Burger King in the Saxon-Anhalt region showing maggots crawling on the kitchen floor after escaping the food-waste bin.

Meanwhile, an undercover reporter in Cologne saw a mouse in the kitchen and found piles of mouse feces in two locations in the restaurant. While preparing food for customers, the reporter said they found a burger bun that had been nibbled by an animal.

The meat wasn't always stored hygienically.

Burger patties made from animal and plant-based ingredients were fried in the same oil and, in some cases, cooked next to one another in the same fryer, according to a second reporter who conducted an undercover investigation at a different restaurant in Cologne.

When their location ran out of plant-based patties, workers substituted genuine chicken patties for them and wrapped them in the packaging used for plant-based items, according to a former Burger King employee. Another claimed that regular nuggets were occasionally marketed as vegan ones.

Burger King reported that V-Label, a business that certifies products as vegan based on production processes and ingredients, revoked its label from five of Burger King's products just days after the show's release.

Burger King Deutschland said that it took the accusations "very seriously" and that it didn't tolerate the violation of its standards. It added that it was planning measures together with its franchisees and would be shortly setting up a whistleblower hotline for staff with concerns.

The burger giant also said that it had temporarily closed the restaurants featured in the show and had carried out an external audit of all its 750 restaurants.