Starbucks sued after 2-year-old ‘drank Frappuccino tainted with blood’
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Starbucks is facing a lawsuit from a California family who alleges that in 2016 the popular chain served them a drink tainted with blood. Amanda and Luis Vice claim they did not notice the red smears on the outside and inside of one of their Starbucks Frappuccino cups from a San Bernardino Starbucks location until they had arrived home. More concerning, their 2-year-old daughter Payton consumed some of the beverage, they said.
“My wife and my baby just drank someone’s blood,” Louis Vice told KTLA News. “It was bad.”
“Once we drank it, then we could see on the inside of the rim that there was blood,” his wife Amanda added. She also told the local news outlet that her daughter had been licking the lid and eating the whipped cream from the Frappuccino lid and that the drinks emitted a strong metal odor.
According to a press release issued by their lawyer, the Vice family called the Starbucks, only to be informed that an employee had been bleeding and had been taken off the floor. The Vices claim that the Starbucks manager offered them free drinks for a week but that the family instead requested that the bleeding employee get a blood test to assess their vulnerability to any communicable diseases. The family alleges that the manager agreed, but that the employee did not take a blood test.
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The press release states that Amanda and her daughter took blood tests and that they came back negative for any diseases and were retested six months later to be certain. Starbucks later offered each family member who consumed the contaminated beverage $1,000 as compensation, but according to the family’s attorney, the Vices turned the offer down.
“They endured additional distress because Starbucks seemed to not care about their wellbeing and refused to direct the employee to undergo a blood test to ensure the family’s safety,” the family’s lawyer Stan Pekler said in the press release.
A Starbucks spokesperson told The Daily Meal, “We are aware of this claim, that allegedly took place in 2016, and are prepared to present our case in court.”
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