In-N-Out Burger’s bad luck with buns seems to be contagious.
Just days after the West Coast fast-food chain said it would close all of its Texas restaurants for two days because of quality problems with its burger buns, two other Texas fast food chains have followed suit.
Both the San-Antonio-based burger brand, Whataburger, and Raising Cane’s, a fried chicken chain with more than 20 locations in Texas, issued a recall on white buns and toast on Wednesday due to “quality issues” with unnamed suppliers. Unlike In-N-Out, both restaurants kept their doors open while waiting for new shipments of fresh buns to arrive, offering customers bread substitutes like wheat and tortillas in the interim.
“We voluntarily removed white buns and Texas Toast from some of our restaurants in the DFW area, East and West Texas, Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas because of a quality issue with one of our suppliers,” Whataburger said in a statement.
At the time of its temporary closure, In-N-Out was vague about why exactly the bad buns failed to meet its “quality standards,” but assured customers that they posed no health risk. Whataburger, however, was more specific, in saying that flavor was to blame.
“There’s no health risk at all, rather an impact on our bun’s flavor caused by an unbalance in the yeast, and we want to make sure our customers get the best product,” the restaurant said in its statement.
Similarly, Raising Cane’s cited concerns about taste for its recall, but offered customers the option of a free substitution and apologized for any inconvenience the toast shortage may have caused.
“At Raising Cane’s, we never sacrifice quality and because of this, our Texas restaurants are regrettably not serving our Texas toast,” the company said in a statement to TV news station KFOX. “This is not a food safety issue. Our bread delivery did not meet our high quality standards for taste and therefore we are offering customers a substitution of another side item or additional chicken finger.”
It’s unclear whether Whataburger or Raising Cane’s obtained the faulty buns from the same supplier as In-N-Out.