A TAKEAWAY boss has defended his business after a Facebook post was critical of their food.

Faisal Khalid, from Munchies, a chicken and pizza restaurant in Lowesmoor, said negative comments online were "the most immediate threat to any company's reputation."

He spoke out after a recent Facebook post in which a customer claimed the chicken wings she bought from Munchies were undercooked was shared multiple times.

Munchies say all chicken grilled or fried at the takeaway is temperature-checked and that pink meat is not a sign of meat being undercooked.

Faisal Khalid, of Munchies, said: “There's no need to worry about the quality or the safety of the meat, though we agree, this discoloration isn't particularly appealing.

"It does not indicate that the meat is insufficiently cooked.

“The only way to safely check whether the chicken has been cooked is by using a thermometer and making sure it reaches at least 82C.

"At Munchies, our policy is that all our fried chicken must reach at least 88C and our grilled chicken must reach 85C.”

He added that staff at Munchies are proud of the takeaway’s five-star food hygiene rating and shared a video showing chicken fried that has been cooked to the correct temperature but still has a discoloration.

This, he said, is due to the nature of mass-produced chicken sold to all takeaways.

Negative social media content can destroy trust in our brand

He also spoke of the impact social media comments can have on businesses already struggling with the spiralling cost of raw ingredients.

“Any negative social media content can destroy trust in our brand in a matter of minutes,” he said. “Trust that we have worked hard in building over the past 10 years.

“This is the most immediate threat to any company’s reputation.

"If not taken seriously it can and will directly impact our company financially and culturally. It doesn’t even have to be accurate.”

A Just Eat spokesperson confirmed it was investigating a complaint, adding: “We take food safety extremely seriously and actively work to raise standards across the takeaway sector.

“For us, it's really important that our customers have a positive experience when ordering their food online and were sorry to hear that, in this case, this customer’s experience did not reflect the high standard we would hope to deliver.”