Costa Coffee have been slammed for putting customers 'at risk' by wrongly telling them their 'steam is hot enough to kill allergens' - forcing the embarrassed brand to backtrack and delete the 'dangerous' advice. A dad tweeted the brand asking them about gluten-free options so his coeliac teen daughter could enjoy a hot drink with friends and not feel like 'an odd one out'.
The chain's official Twitter account quickly responded informing them that the heat from the steam arm on their coffee machines is 'high [hot] enough to [sterilise] any allergen remaining and eliminate the prospect of cross-contamination risk'. However, gluten-free recipe book author Becky Excell chimed in to warn coeliacs not to listen to the 'misinformation' and emphasising that 'heat does not kill gluten'.
Costa quickly deleted its tweet but the 31-year-old said the 'worrying' mistake makes her concerned about practices to avoid cross-contamination in the chain's stores. Costa Coffee has since apologised for sharing the 'incorrect information' and said that the tweet does not reflect practices in store and that staff follow 'strict processes' to avoid cross-contamination.
Becky, from Colchester, Essex, said: "I follow Costa on Twitter and they'd announced that day that they were bringing out some gluten free products so I was looking on their page. I saw a father had tweeted them asking for advice about things being gluten free at Costa because his daughter is coeliac. That's a situation where you want to get it right because it's a parent trying to understand if Costa is safe to eat at for his young child.
"Then I noticed their really awful response - they said 'heat kills gluten'. Heat does not kill gluten. You just think oh my god how can someone say that because it's 100 percent wrong. For all the people that have nut and other life-threatening allergies, I would be really worried now by what they're doing.
"You'd think with things that have gone on in the recent past with Pret that places would be a bit more careful so that they don't give out wrong information. People who are coeliac have enough to deal with and it's just really difficult to see someone in that position, working as PR at Costa, putting out such terrible information."
The author replied to the tweet saying: "Nooo. Please do not listen to this. Heat does not kill gluten." - as she was concerned that the hundreds of thousands of the brand's followers were being misinformed. More and more furious gluten-free customers then began tweeting Costa, demanding the brand address the incorrect advice and posting about their disappointment.
Carli Potter Lane said: "What hope do we have when Costa Coffee are spouting this nonsense! If heat killed gluten, then all cooked food would be gluten-free. Just one more reason why I won't set foot inside Costa anymore!" Another said: "I do hope they do a post apologising for posting such dangerous and misleading information!"
Within a couple of hours the tweet was then deleted and the Costa Coffee Twitter account began replying to individual tweets apologising for the mistake. One response said: "We are taking this very matter very seriously and reiterating to our customer service colleagues the risk that is present in store and what our approach is in store regarding cross-contamination."
But Becky and other members of the coeliac community were disappointed that the brand failed to tweet an open apology and correction of the misinformation, instead choosing to 'sweep it under the carpet'. She then emailed the chain with a formal complaint which elicited a longer response, again apologising for the misinformation and explaining that they deleted the tweet 'in order to try and prevent further confusion'.
The email said: "I want to reassure you that the posts do not reflect the approach taken in our stores to minimise the risks of cross-contamination. We know that there is always a risk of cross-contamination when preparing drinks in store, and our teams follow strict processes in order to minimise this risk. This includes the use of separate jugs and cloths when preparing any drink with a plant-based alternative."
Becky said: "It angered a lot of people who have been coeliac for a long time but what really worries me is that there might be newly-diagnosed people reading that who are confused about it now. You would expect that a big brand like Costa would be giving out the correct information. The fact that they didn't properly address it and just deleted it is quite worrying because there are probably a lot of people who saw it that aren't sure now.
"Places like that seem to do that all the time, try and sweep it under the rug and think it will just go away but when it's to do with someone's health it shouldn't just go away. It would've been really nice if they just apologised openly to everyone and maybe referred people to Coeliac UK to get some information on it, but they chose to just hide."
The author is an 'undiagnosed coeliac' as constant stomach issues and brain fog - symptoms of coeliac disease - led her doctor to tell her to cut gluten out of her diet. When her symptoms improved after changing her diet, she says the doctor offered to test her for coeliac disease but to be accurately tested she would need to reintroduce gluten to her diet.
Due to how 'poorly' eating gluten made her feel, she opted to continue being gluten-free without the official diagnosis and has never eaten gluten since, 13 years later. Through her work as an ambassador with the charity Coeliac UK, she claims she has discovered that there are 'hundreds of thousands' of other undiagnosed coeliacs in the UK on top of the diagnosed figure of one in every 100 people.
Despite this, she says gluten-free options in coffee shops remain 'poor'. Becky said: "Things have got so much better over the 13 years I've been eating gluten-free - at the beginning you couldn't find much in the supermarkets and what options there were, were really bad. But generally in the supermarkets now there's a 'free from' aisle and even eating out at restaurants and cafes and stuff they'll often have a gluten-free menu. But places like Costa and coffee shops are still really poor - up until last week Costa didn't even have a savoury option.
"There's so many people that have to eat gluten-free, including myself, and you have to really plan in advance and it can be really difficult and frustrating, especially when places are offering out misinformation. It makes it quite nerve-wracking because you don't want to go out to eat and worry that you might get poorly after it because going out for food is supposed to be an enjoyable occasion.
"I didn't go to Costa much to start with because there weren't the options but now with this as well it's not really somewhere I would choose to go. People say you can go to local coffee shops instead but when you're in smaller towns there isn't much choice and Costa might be the only coffee shop."
Following her 'huge lifestyle change' in adopting a gluten-free diet 13 years ago and struggling with cooking and eating out, Becky became an author of books aimed at helping the coeliac community. Her first two books - How to Make Anything Gluten Free and How to Bake Anything Gluten Free - offer a wide range of gluten free recipes. Her third book - How to Plan Anything Gluten Free - which is due to be released on 24th March, offers further recipes as well as tips on eating out as a coeliac.
A spokesperson for Costa Coffee said: “We take the safety and wellbeing of our customers extremely seriously and apologise for the incorrect information that was shared from our Twitter account. As soon as we were made aware of the error we apologised and shared a correct version of our in-store process to those who contacted us.
"We also removed the original tweet to avoid further confusion, following feedback from customers online. In our stores, to help reduce the risk to customers from cross-contamination, we have strict training and procedures in place.
"When a customer informs us about an allergy or dietary requirement our team members are happy to explain the measures we can take to reduce the risk of cross-contamination, so they can make an informed choice. This can include the use of additional equipment, such as separate jugs and cleaning cloths. Steam wands are also cleaned with the relevant cloths and purged after every drink preparation to reduce the risk of cross-contamination."
