Yes, most people buy meat with the plan of cooking it, so unless this cart was particularly dirty, they could have just washed the meat.
Of course you don’t want the driver grabbing a cart from the front then putting it back all bloody, but it’s plausible that this is a meat-only cart. It is an unfortunate visual, but a waste of meat.
I have been wondering why they went through the front door in the first place. But this explains it:
No parking lot in the back. Loading dock is is right next to the mall entrance. My guess is, some other trucks were in the dock, they just found parking in the front, and loaded the meat right onto the cart and took the shortest route into the store.
Ranches in Cupertino and Mountain View have more space in the back of the store/ around the loading dock.
Ok, I am back home now… much easier to type. My opinion. It is not a great PR to see people using shopping carts to move raw meat through the front door of a supermarket. However, logically speaking, this is not the end of the world. I have seen people carried entire pig carcasses through the front door of restaurant or small store.
Some stores have front door and some don’t. The idea that carrying meat through the front door is “scary” is just nonsense. For the love of god, where do you think customers carry their meat out of? They bought their raw meat and put them in their shopping carts and then carried the raw meat out of the front door. The shopping carts constantly see raw meat and raw fish. This is not new. It is just at this point the meats are all chopped up. No, the little plastic bags are not really keeping the meat from contaminating the area.
I find the level public outrageous to be weird. If anything, my worry is that the shopping cart contaminated the meat, not the other way around. I bet you my an arm and a leg that any supermarket shopping cart has more bacteria than a dead frozen/refrigerated pig carcass.
NotJrvedici your map is of the wrong Ranch 99. The correct one has a Costco across the street.
According to a spokesperson, the meat was wrapped and in cardboard bins when it left the plant. They do not understand why it was unwrapped, etc. The two employees have been fired.
edited.
Aha! “in a cardboard bin” probably looks like ones holding watermelons.
no doubt needed to be unloaded using a forklift. bin probably weighed a ton.
for whatever reason, this wasn’t done.
still no excuse for unwrapping the meat from the covered bin and transporting same using a grocery cart.
delivery persons should have carried the mean singly into Ranch 99 though it would be very time consuming.
99 Ranch it is.
So I happened to talk to a Ranch employee and a butcher separately this week. Interesting conversations.
The Ranch employee told me that the same thing happened at another of their store the week before. So there was some chatter that there might be foul play involved by competitors.
I was buying meat at Dittmer’s. Mark brought up the Ranch incident. Apparently they have had many more new customers since the news broke. We talked about meat cleanliness. He’s apparently super strict about the protocol. No meat lying on the floor, etc. So I guess not every one in the industry is casual about how to take delivery of meat.
