Woolworths under fire by Gunalda Hotel over roast chicken raffle

A country pub has given Woolworths “the flick” after the supermarket shared concerns over the “food safety implications” of a weekly hot roast chicken raffle.

The owner of the Gunalda Hotel has criticised Woolworths in Gympie after the pub was contacted about their hot chicken draw.

A Gympie region hotel has slammed Woolworths Gympie in a Facebook post after the grocery store called to shut down the hotel’s weekly “roast chicken draw.”

Pat Rider, from the Gunalda Hotel, unloaded the criticism in a Facebook post last week stating Woolworths Gympie told the pub it was against the law to advertise chickens for their Thursday roast chicken raffle.

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“I paid for the chickens which makes them mine and I can do whatever I like with them,” the post stated.

“There’s no such law for me to not advertise my chicken draw.”

The owner of the Gunalda Hotel has slammed Woolworths in a social media post.

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Mr Rider said he completed a fair trading course and ran the roast chicken promotions at two previous Queensland pubs.

“For the other two pubs, I purchased the roast chickens from Coles and they knew what I was doing with them and had no problems how I used them,” the post stated.

The Gunalda Hotel is located about 29km north of Gympie. Photo: Facebook.

The post continued on to say the pub spent $400 per week on soft drinks and other items at Woolworths in the past three years, totalling to $62,400.

“We have to wait in line forever to get served as six cash registers are always closed just about every week,” the post said.

A Woolworths spokesperson said the grocery store took food safety very seriously and their teams worked to “uphold the highest food safety standards everyday.”

“For our hot roast chickens, this includes food safety controls to ensure they are cooked and stored at the correct temperature and sold within certain time parameters,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to be concerned about claims regarding the distribution of these hot roast chickens as prizes for a local Gunalda event.”

The spokesperson said they contacted the pub to raise their concerns about the “food safety implications involved in storing and redistributing hot roast chickens as prizes”.

Gympie Woolworths is not happy about a local pub’s hot chicken raffle.

The post resulted in a social media storm with many comments calling for the pub to buy local from Drakes IGA, farms or butchers rather than supporting chain supermarkets.

Some commentators said they enjoyed the “rant,” encouraging the pub management to “stick it to them” or “give them a flick” and chiming in to support local businesses.

Others were concerned about the safety of moving the hot chickens for the raffle from Gympie to Gunalda, a 24-minute journey by car.

The Gunalda Hotel hosts a hot roast chicken raffle every Thursday with 10 Woolworths hot chickens to be won. Photo: Facebook.

“You can’t even click and collect a hot chook from any supermarket because of this very strict regulation,” Ashleigh Jensen said in a comment

“If you are not keeping the chooks above or below a certain temperature, then you can make someone very sick.”

Christian Portugaller said: “I would imagine they are concerned as when you poison someone, no doubt you will point at them.”

Another poster, Nick Farley, wrote: “Guess it a food handling issue and how the chickens are transported and if the chickens are refrigerated on the journey from A to B and what are they contained in. If someone was to get sick, I‘m sure you would be telling the people they were Woolworths chickens again.”