As a rule, customers have no idea what happens behind restaurant kitchen doors. Typically, they place their trust in the staff to handle their food properly on clean dishware in a pristine environment.
However, only those who currently or previously worked in the industry know the truth. And sometimes, the conditions aren’t as sanitary as we would like to believe, even at upscale casual dining restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory.
What is wrong with this Cheesecake Factory?
“Enjoy us meals at the Cheesecake Factory, y’all,” North Carolina-based Cheesecake Factory employee Terrance (@terranceharris093) writes in the text overlay.
Then, he takes over 105,000 viewers on a tour of his alleged kitchen workplace. “You think I eat at this [expletive?],” he says, scanning over the piles of soapy, soaked dishware, scattered under the dish station floor.
But what the employee claims next is much worse. “They pick these up, put [them] right back, rinse them out, and put them back out there to cook food on,” he says. When he turns to the stove, there are several stacks of dirty dishes. “You see this [expletive]? Cheesecake Factory,” the content creator concludes.
What did viewers think?
Terrance had the opposite effect, sparking a divisive comments section. There were a few who were disgusted by the sight.
“Now, why did you have to go ruin it for me now?” one viewer asked.
“Won’t eat there anymore. Bummer,” a second agreed.
“How I feel working at chipotle,” a third stated.
Meanwhile, others were not phased,
“This [is almost] every restaurant unfortunately,” one commenter remarked.
“It’s literally like this at 95% of all restaurants. the public has NO CLUE!” another echoed.
“All restraunts [reuse] dishes it’s up to the dish washer to make em clean. Especially them small breakfast spots,” a third wrote.
Do all Cheesecake Factory locations do this?
According to AFYA Food Safety, improper kitchen cleanliness is one of the major causes of foodborne illnesses. As a result, food can become contaminated with harmful bacteria, affecting millions of people. This begs the question: do all Cheesecake Factory kitchens look like that?
In 2021, the topic made its way to an r/restaurants subreddit where an alleged former employee posted a video from 2018, showing mountains of dishware packed on top of each other, covering the entire dish station surface and scattered across the floor, along with splatters of food remnants. From there, more employees joined the chat to share their experiences.
“This is giving me PTSD, this is how [it] used to look when I worked at the Cheesecake Factory in Downtown Denver,” one user recalled.
“I worked at a Cheesecake Factory outside Chicago and it was like this too,” a second agreed.
But a third had a slightly different experience, writing, “Luckily my kitchen was never that bad, at least the [expletive] on the floor was semi-organized…. lol.”
It’s unknown whether all Cheesecake Factory locations operate their kitchens the same way.
@terranceharris093 #CanSumbodySayParasites??♂️ ♬ original sound – Papi Slime
The Mary Sue reached out to Terrance via TikTok comment and direct message as well as to Cheesecake Factory via email.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
