Towel Found in Rice Cooker at Gangwon-do Ski Resort Restaurant... "Compensation and Efforts to Prevent Recurrence"

Towel Dropped into Bathtub Due to Staff Mistake While Moving Rice
"Food Safety and Hygiene Retraining for All Employees"

A towel was found in a group meal rice container (bat) at a restaurant located in a ski resort in Gangwon-do. The ski resort promised compensation to the customer who found the towel and pledged to prevent recurrence.

According to Yonhap News on the 10th, Mr. A, a man in his 20s who went to a ski resort in the province to learn skiing in a group, visited a restaurant around 12:30 PM on the 8th to have lunch and discovered a towel tangled with rice inside the rice container.

Towel found in the rice cooker. [Photo by Yonhap News]

Mr. A received his serving when the rice container was almost empty, and about 300 university and elementary school students had already finished or were eating their meals.

After finding the towel, a flustered Mr. A informed the restaurant staff. The staff, upon seeing the towel, only exchanged remarks such as "We told you to be careful" and "Why did this come out?" without apologizing, and served Mr. A rice from a new container.

After eating, Mr. A posted a message on an online community asking for advice on how to handle the situation. Seeing the heated response to the post, he hesitantly contacted the customer center.

The ski resort contacted Mr. A, saying, "We apologize for the unfortunate incident," and added, "If you visit again, we will provide lift tickets and restaurant vouchers." It was reported that the ski resort seemed conscious of business impact by referring to the post Mr. A had made on the online community before contacting the customer center.

Mr. A said, "I asked how they would compensate and take measures, but seeing that they only compensated me, I realized this was not a proper response," and added, "They should apologize to the others who were there, too. Compensating only the person who inquired is not right."

A ski resort official stated, "Upon confirming the matter, it was found that a heat-resistant hand towel accidentally got into the bat while transferring rice from the inner pot due to an employee's mistake," and added, "We sincerely apologized immediately to the customer who experienced discomfort, and we will conduct re-education on food safety and hygiene for all employees and do our best to prevent the same incident from happening again."

Meanwhile, some rest food establishments at famous ski resorts and sledding parks in Gangwon-do were also pointed out for hygiene issues during inspections conducted from December 2016 to January 2017 and have since made improvements. At that time, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety identified 14 out of 392 food service businesses preparing and selling food at ski resorts and other locations that violated the Food Sanitation Act and took administrative actions.

The main violations at that time were △ operating without notification (10 places) △ hygienic handling standards (2 places) △ unreported changes in business area (1 place) △ violations of preservation and distribution standards (1 place).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.