A BurgerFuel customer was left feeling green after a bad blue by a new staff member who put blue vein cheese in their smoothie.
Happily for the rest of us, the grievous mistake was shared with the world by former Hamilton mayoral candidate Louise Hutt (@saycheeselouise), on behalf of a friend, Dougal.
Dougal wrote a public service announcement warning people he had just discovered the "worst flavour in the world" - BurgerFuel's Super Green Smoothie - at a visit to the fast food chain in Frankton, Hamilton.
The smoothie is billed as being "full of all-natural ingredients with nutritional superpowers, all concocted to give you super human strength" and tasting "super good".
Ingredients include banana, golden kiwifruit, hemp seed milk, coconut icecream, Kaitahi "Superfood Mix", and "Supergreens" including spinach, native kawakawa and puha.
Sounds delicious - but Dougal says he and his partner didn't get past the first gulp, according to a complaint he reportedly sent to the fast food chain's Facebook page.
"Hi there, I just purchased one of the new green smoothies from your store in Frankton, and was extremely dissatisfied to say the least," Dougal wrote.
"My partner and I were only able to stomach a sip each before feeling ill, the closest flavour I can compare it to is maybe liquid Blue Cheese? I'm honestly struggling to recall having tasted anything worse in my life, I would literally rather drink tomato sauce.
"It is my highest recommendation that you either remove it from your menu or make significant changes to the recipe, I strongly regret even considering spending money on it.
"My sincere condolences to you if you have had the misfortune of tasting this concoction," Dougal wrote.
The Green Smoothie, left, which Dougal chased down with a feijoa smoothie in an effort to cleanse his palate. Photo / Twitter
But Dougal apparently got a response - store manager Emma replied that she had received Dougal's feedback regarding the Kaitahi Smoothie.
"It is with deepest regret that I believe you are correct on your assumptions regarding blue cheese sauce. By no means do I want to make excuses but to simply explain that we do have a blue cheese sauce that we use for a burger, and can confirm the bottles for the sauce and the kaitahi mix were correctly labelled.
"However, to the eyes of a new staff member working quickly, the consistency of the liquids do appear similar in the fridge.
"I can acknowledge that yes, your smoothie would have been absolutely awful and I apologise sincerely for the experience you have had, as it was not supposed to taste like that," she wrote.
To make it up to Dougal, Emma offered to send burger and fries vouchers for a future visit, accompanied by drinks vouchers.
However, these did not need to be used with the smoothie, she said.
"I wouldn't want to try it again if I'd had the same experience."
A BurgerFuel spokesman confirmed the concoction had been made by mistake.
"All our team at BurgerFuel work super hard and fast, but since we haven't replaced ourselves with robots yet we still make the odd mistake, like grabbing the blue cheese sauce which sits in the same fridge as some of the ingredients in the Kaitahi Super Green Smoothie.
"Safe to say, however, we won't be experimenting with a blue cheese smoothie special anytime soon."
