Hyderabad: A patron of the newly inaugurated IKEA outlet in the city posted pictures on Twitter of a small worm on a plate of vetegable biryani that he had purchased in the Swedish MNC’s cafeteria.
The worm was almost the same shade as the biryani and could have passed off as a grain of rice.
The patron, Abeed Mohammad, said he noticed the worm only while having the biryani. Completely disgusted, he reached out to authorities at IKEA. “The manager immediately took measures to compensate for the problem. I just wanted to notify authorities to ensure this does not take place again,” Mr Abeed said.
The tweet drew the attention of GHMC officials who sent out a team for food inspectors to collect samples for testing. A GHMC official said, “There were worms in the food item which was acquired from Nagpur. The IKEA management has accepted that there were gross sanitary health concerns.” He said the outlet had been penalised '11,500 for violation of hygienic standards.
He said similar instances can be reported to the GHMC on the toll-free number 040 21111111.
Asked about the incident, an Ikea spokesperson said, “We regret the incident and apologise to our customer for the unfortunate experience. We would like to assure him and everyone else that we are investigating the matter currently to assess what happened and take immediate corrective action. At IKEA we have the strictest guidelines when it comes to food safety and quality as customer health and safety are something we care about deeply.”
