Former Wendy's Worker Shows Moldy Grill, 'Rehydrated' Meat in Gross Video

An ex-Wendy's employee has gone viral for exposing his restaurant's revolting kitchen, including a moldy cookstove and a container of meat that allegedly sat out for hours.

Jose G. Martinez, who recently quit the fast food job, warned viewers never to dine at his former restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida.

"A pigpen is better than that place," he told Newsweek.

"This is what y'all been eating off of, look at this sh*t," Martinez said in a TikTok video with 1.2 million views. His camera panned across the Wendy's cookstove covered with splotches of green and white mold.

"They don't know how to clean [their] sh*t properly," he said.

Martinez said that employees wiped the stovetop down after he recorded that video, but it was only topically cleaned, leaving mold to permeate the restaurant's systems.

"To completely sanitize that thing, mold remediation had to be called in," he said. "Until the day I quit, it had not been cleaned."

In a follow-up video, Martinez filmed a tub of meat sitting in clouded water.

"Oh and by the way, this is rehydrated dried-out meat that's been sitting in this thing probably since this morning, or mid-afternoon at least, minimum," he said.

The former employee added that the meat sat out until midnight at the earliest. Workers chopped it up and used it in the restaurant's chili soup over baked potatoes and taco salads, he said.

Martinez said he picked up a night shift at Wendy's in April, while simultaneously working at a mechanic shop during the day. After three months of exhausting 16- to 20-hour workdays, he quit the restaurant.

"I will put a f**king burger that I cooked at home on the ground of this mechanic shop and eat it right off the ground before I would even eat any more food out of that place, how filthy and nasty it is all the time," he said.

Many of Martinez's viewers thanked him for exposing his former employer.

"You're a KING for posting the address of the particular Wendy's! People can't avoid it if they don't know," said one comment.

Meanwhile, others lamented the working conditions that allowed a kitchen to become so unsanitary.

"[Especially] nowadays with [people] not getting paid enough and everywhere is understaffed. Nobody is cleaning anything well. Best to eat at home," said another viewer.

A Wendy's spokesperson told Newsweek, "This video was posted by a former team member who no longer works at the restaurant. We are committed to upholding our high standards of cleanliness and quality, and continue to reinforce our strict quality procedures with our restaurant team."

Martinez's video comes on the heels of a probe by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into an E. Coli outbreak linked with Wendy's restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The CDC announced on Friday that many sick people reported eating sandwiches with romaine lettuce at Wendy's locations. Thirty-seven people have fallen ill and 10 have been hospitalized.

The restaurant said that it is "fully cooperating with public health authorities on their ongoing investigation of the regional E. coli outbreak reported in certain midwestern states."

"While the CDC has not yet confirmed a specific food as the source of that outbreak, we are taking the precaution of discarding and replacing the sandwich lettuce at some restaurants in that region," said a spokesperson. "The lettuce that we use in our salads is different, and is not affected by this action."

In February, another former Wendy's worker posted a viral video appearing to show cockroaches in his restaurant's kitchen. Meanwhile, in January, an alleged employee claimed to demonstrate how the restaurant made its popular chili dish with microwaved old patties.

Updated 08/25/2022, 11:40 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with comments from Jose G. Martinez.