NAPLES, Fl. (WBBH) – A Naples McDonald’s restaurant is closed after a video was shared on social media showing rats roaming the kitchen.
Keysha Vega posted the video to Instagram after she and her boyfriend found the rats at the McDonald’s off Pine Ridge Road just after midnight on Tuesday.
“I was on the way to the airport with my boyfriend and we were like ‘Oh, let’s go get ice cream,’” Vega said.
They turned into the McDonald’s located in the Crossroads Market and right up to the drive-thru. No one answered at the ordering screen, so they went forward to the window.
Vega told NBC-2 she expected to see workers inside, but she didn’t see any humans, rather rats.
“We had just started seeing a few rats and we were just like ‘What the heck,’” she said.
Big rats, small rats, it looked like an entire family.
“It’s Ratatouille. They got the babies, they got the grandpa, you know,” Vega said. “They got everyone in there.”
The video shows about five, but she says they counted ten rodents running rampant in the kitchen.
“That was just the drive-thru, you know? So who knows how many are running around the rest of the restaurant.”
The restaurant was still open Wednesday morning when she stopped by, so NBC-2 decided to take a spin through the drive-thru.
There the restaurant was closed with signs posted that read “CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. THANK YOU.”
The owner/operator of the franchise, Mike Adams, told NBC-2 in a statement that they closed down after seeing the video online. The store will undergo a deep clean, along with the building’s other tenant, a Circle K gas station.
FULL STATEMENT FROM MCDONALD’S OWNER/OPERATOR MIKE ADAMS:
“We are committed to providing our customers and crew members with a clean and safe dining and working experience. We were alerted to a concerning video circulating on social media and we take this situation seriously. Out of an abundance of caution, we are proactively closing this restaurant temporarily while we thoroughly deep clean and sanitize the restaurant and resolve this matter in coordination with our neighboring business within this building unit.”
Hungry customers kept coming through the drive-thru on Wednesday.
“We were really hoping to get some McDonald’s,” said Quinn Higgins.
But they lost their appetite after watching the video.
“Horror, disgust, nausea,” said Fritz Lemoine. “Not the cleanest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Never. Rats are, ugh,” Higgins added.
In the past, this McDonald’s has had a pretty clean track record. They were only docked for some improper food storage and hair net violations, among others, in the past several years.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation said they’re sending an inspection crew out to evaluate.
Even if they get a clean report, these rats ruined the McDonald’s run for some.
“It’s going to be hard to forget that picture you just showed,” said Lemoine.
McDonald’s didn’t say when they would be reopening the store.
The post Nearly a dozen rats roam Naples McDonald’s, restaurant voluntarily closes appeared first on NBC2 News.
