What to know
- A GTA content creator says she won’t return to Dave’s Hot Chicken after finding a discoloured piece of chicken in a sandwich purchased at the chain’s Pickering location.
- Mars said the green meat smelled “disgusting,” prompting her to stop eating and inspect the sandwich. She messaged the company on Instagram the next morning but didn’t receive a response at the time.
- Dave’s Hot Chicken said it contacted the creator, escalated the issue to its supplier, and launched a product review, emphasizing the incident is rare and doesn’t reflect its food quality standards.
- The supplier suggested the appearance may be consistent with deep pectoral myopathy, a naturally occurring condition that affects appearance but is considered safe to eat, while adding it is continuing to investigate.
A Greater Toronto Area content creator says she will never be eating at Dave’s Hot Chicken again after she found a discoloured piece of chicken when she took a bite of her sandwich.
A video by Paris Mars, who also goes by parisfromtoronto on TikTok, has been going viral for showing a chunk of green meat in the middle of a chicken sandwich from the franchise’s Pickering location.
“What is that? I’m going to throw up,” Mars said in the video posted on Monday. “…It had a disgusting smell and that’s why I stopped eating and looked at what I was putting in my mouth.”
Mars added in the video that she had directly messaged Dave’s Hot Chicken on Instagram when the morning after the incident happened, on March 7, but received no response after the company read her message.
In an email to Now Toronto on Wednesday, the Dave’s Hot Chicken franchise said they take concerns like this very seriously and escalated the issue to the chicken supplier.
“We are aware of the video circulating online and have been in direct contact with the individual who shared it,” the company stated. “Out of an abundance of caution, we immediately escalated this to our chicken supplier and launched a review of the product in question. While issues like this are rare, they do not reflect the standards we hold for our food or the experience we aim to provide every guest.”
Dave’s Hot Chicken added they are working closely with the supplier to understand what happened and reinforce their quality standards.
The restaurant chain’s chicken supplier, who was not named, stated the state of the chicken shown in the viral video, though disturbing, did not impact food safety standards.
“While we cannot definitively evaluate the specific item shown without direct examination, it appears consistent with a naturally occurring condition in poultry known as deep pectoral myopathy, which exhibits symptoms deep inside of the breast muscle,” the supplier explained in the same email. “This condition, while rare, can occur in otherwise healthy birds that have passed all required USDA inspections. Although this condition may affect the appearance and texture of the meat, it does not impact food safety. The product remains safe to consume; however, we recognize that it does not meet the quality standards we strive to deliver.”
Dave’s supplier added they were still actively looking into the situation in order to try and minimize this condition in the chickens.
The condition, also known as green muscle disease, tends to occur in chickens due to intense wing flapping.
In an earlier instance, Mars also experienced an issue with one of Dave’s Hot Chicken’s newest menu items, Dave’s “Hot Mozz,” which are spicy mozzarella sticks.
In another video, Mars showed the state of a thinner-than-normal hot mozzarella stick, which appeared different than advertised.
In a comment under the video, Mars explained that when she asked the manager about the condition of the cheese, they told her Canadian locations of Dave’s Hot Chicken don’t freeze the mozzarella sticks like American locations allegedly do, in order to keep them fresh.
“This can’t be real life,” Mars said at the end of the video.
