A customer who popped into Pret A Manger
for a lunchtime snack got more greens than she bargained for... when
she found a dead frog in her salad.
The Wall Street
Journal employee had visited the branch on Sixth Avenue/47 Street in
Manhattan yesterday to get what she assumed would be a regular Albacore
Tuna Nicoise Salad.
But
in addition to the tomatoes, tuna, egg and olives, there was an extra
ingredient: the small amphibian, almost camouflaged among the salad
leaves.
Kathryn Lurie, digital features
editor at the WSJ, posted a photo of the novel salad on behalf of her
startled co-worker who bought the meal and did not wish to be
identified.
Lurie said told Gothamist that her colleague had started the meal at her desk and was 'pretty shaken' to discover the two-inch long green-brown creature.
A spokesman for Pret said: 'At Pret A Manger, we take issues like this very seriously.
'Our lettuce is sourced from farms
that do not use any pesticides on its produce, therefore organic matter
does very rarely manage to pass through our production process.
'We are currently looking into this issue to make every effort that this does not happen again.'
Ellen Roggemann, vice president of brand marketing for the company in the U.S., told the WSJ that the 'handmade natural food' sold by the chain is often made from organic ingredients.
She added that this could be partially to blame for the frog in the salad.
Ms
Roggemann said: 'We don’t use any pesticides with our greens and they
go through multiple washing cycles. An unfortunate piece of organic
matter has made its way through.'
The manager of the branch has since apologised and given the customer a refund, plus a voucher for a free lunch.
And
as for the frog: it lives on, as it were, in meme form - including one
showing the poor little critter wearing a festive woolly hat.
The Wall Street
Journal employee had visited the branch on Sixth Avenue/47 Street in
Manhattan yesterday to get what she assumed would be a regular Albacore
Tuna Nicoise Salad.