Razor found in muffin an accident, 'mortified' baker says

The owner of a local bakery said today that a razor blade found in a muffin bought at a QFC store in Mountlake Terrace got there by accident when one of her workers dropped the blade in a vat of batter.

Molly Wilmot, owner of Mostly Muffins, said a longtime employee was using the blade last Sunday to open bags and boxes when it fell into a giant mixing bowl. He lost it in the batter and was afraid to tell his manager.

The employee has been suspended until the company completes an internal investigation, and all Mostly Muffins products have been removed from QFC stores until the bakery completes an independent audit of its facilities.

"I am mortified — mortified," Wilmot said. "I'm just glad nobody got hurt."

The incident came to light Thursday after Mountlake Terrace resident and Seattle Times administrative assistant Jill Hutchison, 48, broke apart an almond-poppyseed muffin she bought at the grocery store and found a lump baked into it. When it turned out to be a razor blade, Hutchison returned the four-pack of muffins to the store.

Quality-control staff at QFC, which is owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger, traced the prepackaged muffins to Mostly Muffins, a Kent-based bakery that got its start 23 years ago in a church basement on Capitol Hill.

Wilmot said she confronted her staff and asked how such a thing could have happened and a baker who had been with the company for five years immediately stepped forward and said he was responsible.

"I can say with absolute certainty that this was not a tampering issue," she said.

Wilmot said the employee was genuinely sorry and upset by his own actions.

Mostly Muffins requires its workers to use only approved box cutters to open packages, "but for some reason he brought in his own razor blade."

That the razor blade actually worked its way into one of her products is the result, she said, of "the perfect storm."

Bakers mix batter in giant 160-pound bowls, and typically make more than 5,000 pounds a night. Wilmot said she presumes her employee figured that the blade would have gotten lodged in the cylinder that squeezes batter into muffin tins.

"Literally a walnut shell is usually enough to stop this piece of equipment," she said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, this machine would have caught it."

In addition, Wilmot said, the company normally runs its goods through a metal detector before they're shipped — all but one type of muffin, which gets wrapped in packaging that includes bits of metal that always sets off the machine. That's where this particular blade landed.

Kristin Maas, spokeswoman for QFC, wouldn't comment on Wilmot's explanation because the incident is still under an internal investigation. She said the company has "locked down" the bar codes on all Mostly Muffins goods at QFC stores around the region so customers who find a stray package they missed won't be able to purchase it.

"We are asking a third party to make sure that every thing is compliant, make sure they are complying to the same food-safety standards that QFC does," she said.

Wilmot said she holds her company and employees to high standards of safety and quality, and has had QFC as a customer for 17 years.

"We've had a lot of good fortune in our business," she said. "We will make this right."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com. Information from Seattle Times reporter Lynn Thompson is included in this report.