What This Coffee Culture Incident Says About Food Safety

A customer reported that a Guming milk foam delivery contained a box of white powder instead of topping. After mixing it with water, the taste was wrong and resembled laundry detergent. The store first denied the mistake, then confirmed an employee had packed the wrong item. The customer received 10 coupons, medical expense coverage, and an apology from staff who sang on request.

The customer was not unwell and did not go to the hospital, so the case ended with compensation rather than a medical claim. Online discussion focused on how the store handled the situation, with many people saying the response lacked sincerity for a food safety matter. The episode is a reminder that what does coffee have in it is not only about ingredients, but about how drinks and toppings are prepared and packed.

Recently, a customer exposed on social media that the Gu Ming milk foam they received actually contained a box of white powder. After brewing, it tasted abnormal and was suspected to be detergent. The store initially denied it, then admitted that an employee had put in the wrong topping, and offered compensation of 10 coupons and coverage of medical expenses. The customer, who was not unwell, did not go to the hospital, accepted the compensation, and asked the staff to sing as an apology. The incident sparked heated discussion among netizens, who felt the store's handling lacked sincerity and showed insufficient awareness of the severity of a food safety incident.

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Yesterday afternoon, a customer uploaded a short video on social media, saying that the Gu Ming milk foam they received was completely different from what they expected. The video showed that after the customer tore open the sealed film of the takeout box, inside was not sweet cream, but a small box of white powder.

Faced with this surprise, the customer immediately contacted the store through a third-party platform. Before the merchant replied, the poster thought the white powder might be an ingredient for making milk foam, so they took some, added water, and brewed it. After a sip, they found the taste was wrong and quickly spat it out. According to the poster, the powder did not dissolve in cold water and tasted similar to laundry detergent, so it was certain that it had nothing to do with milk foam.

Without waiting for a reply from the platform, the customer called the store directly to provide feedback. When the staff heard that the customer had received white powder similar to laundry detergent, they firmly denied it at first, saying there was no such thing in the store, but regarding the wrong topping, the other party said they could send the consumer another milk foam.

(The left picture shows the cleaning powder the customer received; the right picture shows the milk foam the merchant resent.)

After a while, the store manager may have learned about the situation and confirmed that an employee had put in the wrong topping, so they called the poster to apologize and admit the mistake, offering 10 coupons as compensation. After learning that the person had tasted the powder, the other party said that if the consumer felt unwell and needed to go to the hospital for examination, they were willing to bear the related expenses.

Regarding the store manager's proposal, although the poster had taken two sips without knowing what it was, they did not notice any abnormality after trying it, so they did not go to the hospital for examination. Instead, they accepted the store's compensation plan and also asked the other party to send two more milk foams and have the staff sing a song.

After learning how the incident developed, many onlookers were angry at the poster for accepting the store's compensation coupons, feeling the poster did not fight for their rights.

Food and beverage practitioners pointed out that the white powder the consumer received should be a cleaning agent such as descaling powder or stain remover powder. They said that most of these cleaning powders contain strongly alkaline or strongly acidic chemicals, and even though the poster only took two sips, their ingredients may cause harm to the tongue, stomach, and intestines, so they believed the poster should go to the hospital for examination in time.

As for why the store made such a serious mistake, experienced milk tea workers guessed that a staff member may have packed some cleaning powder to take home, but others mistakenly thought it was a prepared topping, which was how it ended up in the customer's hands.

For a tea beverage shop, sending chemicals out as a milk tea topping is already a major mistake, and the consumer, unaware, tried cold water brewed with the powder, which may cause harm to the body. However, in this food safety incident, the store offered compensation of 2 milk foams and 10 coupons, and on that basis the consumer only asked the staff to sing a song as an apology, which truly made many netizens both angry and amused.

As one netizen bluntly said, the customer muddled through eating it without anything happening and was willing to handle it simply because the customer was kind-hearted; it does not mean that the store using 10 coupons as compensation was appropriate. "This way of handling it makes it feel like the store has not realized the seriousness of this matter." They believed that, by both emotion and reason, in addition to cooperating with the customer's request for a song as an apology, the store staff should also proactively give the other party some financial compensation.

Images and video from: Xiaohongshu

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.