Attention to all McDonald’s sweet tea fans, this Golden Arches worker just shared some insights on quality control of the drink. And unfortunately, there’s not much customers can do but hope their local McDonald’s is following the proper cleaning procedures.
Here’s what to look for.
McDonald’s sweet tea
A fan favorite, McDonald’s sweet tea is a blend of orange pekoe and pekoe-cut black tea. According to Artful Tea, “orange pekoe” notes the grade of the tea and where it comes from not that the tea has notes of orange in it. Orange pekoe tea tends to mean it’s black tea from India, Sri Lanka, and other parts of Asia. Pekoe generally just means a high quality of black tea made form young leaves.
About that sour taste in McDonald’s sweet tea though
Although it’s supposed to be sweet tea, sometimes your tea can be sour. Why? McDonald’s worker Lu (@cheongsam_lu) explains and talks about how they make sure that doesn’t happen to customers.
While cleaning out the McDonald’s sweet tea container, they point to some residue in the container from the tea that doesn’t come off from simply spraying it with water.
“You see all this yellow [gunk]? That’s what they don’t do… they don’t take a sponge and scrub it,” says Lu.
The text overlay on the video says “Bleach, Scrub, Wash” and “When your sweet tea taste sour this is why.” Lu’s video has amassed 269,000 views and over 13,000 likes.
On the topic of drinks from McDonald’s, the Daily Dot has previously covered on controversy surrounding McDonald’s orange juice. It may face a class-action lawsuit soon.
‘I don’t think you’re allowed’
Several other McDonald’s workers and customers weighed in on Lu’s cleaning sweet tea cleaning protocol.
“McDonald’s have liners baby so we don’t have that problem,” says one comment.
“Thank You for caring! I wish everyone did,” says another.
“The way I tried cleaning this properly and my job got mad,” says another comment.
“I don’t get paid enough for that,” says a different person.
“Ppl saying they don’t get paid to do that. You do, hourly, entry level job with entry level tasks,” says another.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to use bleach per food safety I use dawn and a scrubby and its silver again,” says some one else.
Is bleach safe to use on food items?
While Lu’s way of cleaning the tea container is surely thorough, is it the safest way? Lu has made more than 10 videos responding to viewers’ comments about how they cleaned the container. Some videos are in response to comments concerned about the use of bleach to clean food-preparing items.
While some sources like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Clorox company say it is perfectly OK to use diluted bleach on stainless steal and other food preparing items, others advise against it. It is not clear what McDonald’s official cleaning procedures are for stainless steal items. Lu has said that using bleach to clean is a vetted procedure.
@cheongsam_lu ♬ original sound – Lu
Whatever the standard procedure nationwide for cleaning the sweet tea container at McDonald’s is, it seems to make a major difference when you actually sip on the product.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Lu and McDonald’s for more information.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
