Hangzhou Pizza Shop Employee Detained 7 Days After Dandruff Video

A pizza shop employee in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, has been administratively detained for seven days after a kitchen video appeared to show him shaking dandruff onto a prepared pizza, local police said yesterday.

The employee, surnamed Yang, was punished for illegally picking quarrels and provoking trouble, according to police.

The restaurant, a Champion Pizza outlet at Binhe Plaza in Hangzhou, is now closed. A notice at the entrance said the store was undergoing rectification. Police and market regulators have visited to investigate.

The Gongshu District market regulator said it had interviewed the store's representative on September 14 and opened an investigation. Zhang Wei, head of the regulator's Chaoming office, said the pizza involved had been destroyed and had not been sold to customers.

The video was recorded on September 12 at 7:34pm through the open-kitchen livestream on a food-delivery platform. It appeared to show a male employee removing his work cap and repeatedly rubbing or shaking his hair above a finished pizza. He then appeared to make a sprinkling motion with the hand that had touched his hair.

Two female employees were working in the same kitchen area during the incident and did not intervene, according to the video. The male employee also appeared to be smiling and chatting with colleagues. The footage prompted criticism online over the restaurant's food-safety practices.

The original video was posted by a woman surnamed Liu. She told Jiupai News yesterday that she first saw an employee shaking a soft drink while watching the livestream. She immediately started screen recording and later posted the footage on social media.

Champion Pizza issued two statements on September 14, saying the conduct was an individual, sudden act by an employee and had seriously violated the food-safety bottom line. The company said the store had suspended operations, reported the matter to police and was cooperating with the investigation. It also said all of its outlets would immediately conduct food-safety checks.