Laura (@laura_d), a San Antonio-area realtor, beautician, and beauty influencer, says she discovered what appears to be shards of broken glass embedded inside a cheeseburger salad at Hat Creek Burger Company in Live Oak, Texas. She claims management’s response left her more alarmed than the glass itself.
Laura explains she’d ordered a cheeseburger salad during a lunch break at Hat Creek Burger Company. She was eating in her car when she says she crunched on something harder than what should be in a salad.
“I did feel a crunch in my mouth, and I thought maybe it was a hard piece of the burger,” she said. “I’m very mad at myself now for not spitting it out.”
She kept eating. Then it happened again, she alleges. “I felt crunchiness again. And I was like, okay. Now that doesn’t feel right.” Poking through the salad, she found a piece of what she believes is broken glass. Then she tore through the burger patty, where she claims there were more pieces.
“This was inside my burger at Hat Creek,” she said. “It was literally inside the meat.”
Laura brought the fragments to the manager, whose reaction stunned her. “He just said, ‘Oh, you’ll be fine. I swallowed glass before. It’s not a big deal,’” she claims.
He refunded her meal and took a photo of the shards but offered to throw the evidence away, per Laura. She declined. “I’m not throwing it away because I think I’m gonna go get checked out,” she purportedly replied.
She says one employee showed concern, telling her the burger patties arrive preformed and might need inspection. The manager, she says, didn’t share their urgency. “They didn’t seem to have any kind of reaction to it.”
Laura noted the restaurant was full of families and children. “I wanted to yell it to everybody,” she said, “but I didn’t.”
She didn’t respond to a request for comment.
What happens if you swallow glass?
According to the Food and Drug Administration’s complaint reporting system, glass is the most commonly reported foreign object found in food. The most frequent resulting injury is a laceration or abrasion of the soft tissues around the mouth and throat.
In 2016, a three-year-old girl in Southgate, Michigan, was rushed to the hospital after biting into a Wendy’s hamburger containing glass shards, per a CBS report. “I was pulling food out and blood out and I saw that I had particles of glass on my fingers,” she said.
A police report revealed that a manager told officers glass had been broken in the back room where food was prepared, and the restaurant’s owner later suggested that a light bulb may have broken during maintenance.
People advise medical care and legal advice
Many of the commenters wanted Laura to pursue legal action. But first they urged her to get checked out at the hospital.
“Go to the ER. You might need it for court,” said one litigious commenter. “Please get in touch with a lawyer. I’m from the area but haven’t eaten there; thank you for letting us know.”
“No go further with this. Lawsuit,” said another person. “Call a lawyer and get advice. You should probably get an X-ray or CT scan [and] save the receipt etc. Call a lawyer.”
“It sounds like a supply chain situation,” another person wrote. “Things happen in mass production. They should have definitely been more concerned! I love that place! This is a shame! Did you go to doctor? Likely nothing they could do?”
Hat Creek Burger Company didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
