On October 13th, diners at the Pei Wei restaurant in Rogers, Arkansas received quite the fright — and not purposely in celebration of the Halloween season. Several customers reported finding blood in their meals.
Jackie Tuma and Stasi Thurston told local news station 5NEWS about their gruesome discovery. “My friend [Thurston] noticed that there was some red item on my bowl,” Tuma said. “We got to looking, and it was clearly blood.”
When Tuma reported the blood to the restaurant’s manager, another customer approached the manager regarding the same issue. “Another lady came up and she had the same complaint that her little 8-year-old granddaughter had [eaten] blood as well,” Tuma told 5NEWS. That customer later confirmed her story with the news station.
Three separate accounts of the Pei Wei blood incident were reported to the Arkansas Health Department after October 13th, according to 5NEWS. And at least one complaint has been filed against the Pei Wei location.
The manager told Tuma that a kitchen staff member had cut himself while preparing food, and then went on to offer the affected customers their money back. “We kept telling them that wasn’t what we were looking for,” Tuma said. “We wanted some kind of assurance that we weren’t going to be contaminated from this blood.”
Rogers Pei Wei Launches Investigation After Customers Find Blood In Their Food https://t.co/AGxfWrLAbw
— Rick Bagley (@Bagleykcir) October 16, 2018
Both Tuma and Thurston said they were taken aback by the lack of urgency in the manager’s response, especially considering many more people than just the three who noticed could have been affected.
“It’s not like we had bad chicken and got food poisoning,” Thurston told 5NEWS. “We ingested somebody’s blood.”
In a statement released to 5NEWS, Pei Wei Asian Kitchen said,
“Our utmost priority is the safety and health of our guests and employees. Our leadership team is aware of the incident at this restaurant and have begun an investigation to ensure that our strict safety and quality standards are being followed.”
The Arkansas Department of Health found via their investigation two health code violations. One employee improperly washed his hands and a kitchen utensil was incorrectly stored. Tuma reportedly did a blood test at the hospital, and Pei Wei management has yet to reach out to her.
We’re so disturbed we may never eat out at a restaurant again.
