Starbucks dates trouble for just a few bucks

Two Starbucks outlets in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, were in the news on Monday for allegedly selling food past their use-by date.

The brand boasts on its website that it sells cakes the same day they are baked, but a reporter who joined as a staff member and carried out a sting operation saw them put unsold cakes on the shelves the next day. Some employees actually removed the old use-by tags and replaced them with ones with a new date.

Once the incident was reported, the Wuxi local food safety department said it had spoken with Starbucks and inspected 82 outlets in the city, and found many other lapses including the lack of sanitization records. Starbucks China said on its official micro blog that they "were deeply shocked" by the food safety issue and have launched an internal probe.

This is not the first time Starbucks has been caught in a food safety scandal. On Nov 24, a Starbucks outlet in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, was fined for selling mooncakes past their use-by date, and in May a woman surnamed Lin complained that she was served yogurt past its expiry date. Had Starbucks paid more attention to these issues, perhaps it wouldn't be "shocked" now.

Starbucks reportedly judges a branch's performance by its sales revenue, which prompts branches to cut costs by even selling food items past their use-by dates.

The brand claims to follow strict standards, but the sting easily exposed the violations of food safety norms. If the brand had compensated the outlets for losing money on unsold food, they would not have resorted to selling stale cakes.

As for food safety officials, they must conduct more inspections because many Starbucks outlets have been in the news for violating food safety norms. Those violating food safety norms should be fined heavily so brands such as Starbucks feel more than "shocked" at such disclosures.