Augo Pinho had been on the tail of the suspected chicken dealer for hours.
As the clear autumn afternoon turned to night, Mr. Pinho – a poultry-processing executive suddenly turned amateur sleuth – followed a black pickup truck through traffic, watching the vehicle make stops at three Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc. locations across the Greater Toronto Area. At each stop, the driver delivered boxes through the back door.
The surveillance mission was the result of a tip Mr. Pinho had received from a poultry wholesaler he had worked with for decades: Someone named Amjad Farooq had been buying “significant quantities” of raw chicken from the wholesaler, and had mentioned reselling the meat to Popeyes franchisees.
The story set off alarm bells for Mr. Pinho, the president of ADP Direct Poultry Ltd. It was September of 2022, and in preceding months his team had received an unusual number of complaints from Popeyes restaurants about their chicken – all while complaints from other clients had not increased. Most distressing were reports from Popeyes that the chicken was discoloured, smelled or was rotten.
The ADP team believed it couldn’t be them. Something was wrong.
“I take great pride in ADP’s superior quality assurance processes and ADP takes food safety very seriously,” Mr. Pinho wrote in response to questions from The Globe and Mail. When the wholesaler told him about the orders from Mr. Farooq, Mr. Pinho wondered if there was a connection to the Popeyes complaints. With the help of information from the wholesaler, Mr. Pinho decided to follow the man.
“I wanted to catch Farooq in action and decided to go to his house that day to personally try to get to the bottom of things,” he wrote.
What he found – boxes of what seemed to be chicken stored at a residential address and driven around the city in an unrefrigerated truck – was just the beginning. ADP’s allegations, based on months of surveillance, are now at the centre of one of the most bizarre cases of quality control to hit Canada’s fast-food industry, leaving a trail of unanswered questions and financial damage.
The claims are part of a lawsuit filed by ADP in May against Popeyes’ parent company, Restaurant Brands International Inc. QSR-T, along with a number of Popeyes franchisees. The suit also names Mr. Farooq and a company that manages RBI’s supply chain. The case has ignited a war of words between the fast-food chain and its former supplier, with each accusing the other of failures in maintaining product quality.
The lawsuit alleges that at least two dozen Popeyes locations in the GTA bought “rotten” and “unsafe” meat from Mr. Farooq, who sometimes stored the meat in a residential garage that lacked proper refrigeration or freezing procedures – as did the vehicles in which the raw chicken was transported.
One of at least two dozen Popeyes locations in the GTA named in the lawsuit filed by ADP against Popeyes’ parent company, Restaurant Brands International, along with a number of Popeyes franchisees.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Back in the fall of 2022, after personally following Mr. Farooq on his deliveries, Mr. Pinho alerted RBI, according to an amended statement of claim filed in late June. If franchisees were buying from an unauthorized and unsafe meat supplier, he believed RBI would put a stop to it.
But according to ADP, Mr. Farooq continued to supply the restaurants, at risk to public health.
The Toronto-based fast-food conglomerate, which also owns the Tim Hortons, Burger King and Firehouse Subs chains, has accused the poultry processor of “lashing out after losing our business for a variety of legitimate reasons,” and said it found no evidence supporting the food-safety allegations. ADP, in turn, served RBI with a notice of libel, demanding a full retraction and apology for those statements. Two of the Popeyes franchisee companies filed a statement of defence denying ADP’s allegations.
None of the allegations have been tested in court. Mr. Farooq did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Now, ADP has provided The Globe with a detailed account of what led to its lawsuit, including some of the surveillance reports from a private investigation firm ADP hired to follow Mr. Farooq regularly over a 20-month period. According to Mr. Pinho, ADP shared the investigators’ findings with RBI on multiple occasions.
“My team and I tried to work with them,” Mr. Pinho wrote.
Rather than address the allegations, ADP says it was punished by the fast-food chain’s owner for bringing the problem to light.
“We take food safety seriously, and both in 2022 and 2024, when concerns were raised by this supplier, we acted quickly to look into them,” Popeyes spokesperson Emily Ciantra wrote in a statement to The Globe. “We visited restaurants, investigated the claims and found no evidence of the systemic issues they are claiming. We pride ourselves on a rigorous and proactive food safety program that regularly includes unannounced restaurant visits, third-party audits and ongoing supply chain monitoring.”
Cloak and dagger
ADP began working with RBI in late 2021. Its two processing facilities in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke received chickens after slaughter, cutting the meat into pieces according to RBI’s specifications, in some cases marinating them, and handling packaging. ADP then turned over the fresh and frozen packaged chicken to a centralized distributor, which handled delivery to stores.
If products were damaged in transit, or other issues arose, Popeyes restaurant owners could file complaints through a website controlled by RBI, which were then directed to the product supplier for a response. ADP typically received one complaint, on average, every two months or less, according to Mr. Pinho. For complaints it accepted as legitimate, ADP would reimburse franchisees – providing credits toward future orders.
But in 2022, ADP began receiving 15 to 17 complaints per month from Popeyes franchisees – far more than usual, Mr. Pinho wrote. Because ADP regularly verified its cold chain maintenance, tested its chicken for safety and tracked the products, its team believed the complaints about rotten or spoiled meat were illegitimate. The company refused to issue credits in those cases, according to the amended statement of claim.
It was not clear why ADP would receive complaints about products that did not come from its facility. Then ADP received the tip about Mr. Farooq.
Mr. Pinho found himself at the centre of one of the most bizarre cases of quality control to hit Canada’s fast-food industry.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
According to the account Mr. Pinho provided to The Globe, he asked the wholesaler to alert him the next time the man made a purchase. When he received word on that day in late September, 2022, Mr. Pinho and an employee drove to an address in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough that the wholesaler provided.
The ADP executives monitored the house for three hours before a man arrived, and for two more hours before they saw him load boxes into a pickup truck and pull out of the driveway.
“I never thought I would have ended up in such a ‘cloak and dagger’ drama situation,” Mr. Pinho wrote.
Days after following Mr. Farooq, ADP executives told Tiago Brilhante, RBI’s director of quality assurance, what they had seen.
After first reporting the findings to Mr. Brilhante in conversation, ADP followed up with e-mails that provided RBI with pictures and videos of Mr. Farooq’s activities, Mr. Pinho wrote. ADP also provided contact information for the wholesaler who gave the company the tip about the chicken purchases.
According to the amended statement of claim, after that report in October of 2022, ADP received assurances the unsafe supply would be stopped from representatives for RBI, Popeyes and Restaurant Services Canada Inc. (RSCI) – a third-party company that manages the Popeyes and Burger King supply chains in Canada. The claim further alleges that Joel Neikirk, president and chief executive officer of RSCI’s U.S. parent company, informed ADP that the general manager of Popeyes Canada had visited some locations, “witnessed the unsafe supply and had closed certain stores as a result.”
Mr. Neikirk did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
But several months later, Popeyes franchisees again began lodging an unusual number of complaints with ADP, according to the amended statement of claim. It was then that ADP decided to hire a private investigator.
Another one of the Popeyes locations named in APD’s lawsuit. RBI, the Toronto-based fast-food conglomerate, which owns Popeyes, said it found no evidence supporting the food-safety allegations.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
The private eye
When things are working as they are supposed to, not just anyone can show up at the back door of a big-brand chicken joint and sell cuts of meat.
Franchise businesses typically place strict controls on restaurant owners when it comes to where they buy food and other supplies, to ensure quality and consistency across chains.
These arrangements are so controlled, in fact, that they have occasionally led to friction between franchisees and parent companies – including RBI.
Last year, nearly a dozen Quebec franchisees sued Tim Hortons over their declining profits. Those claims have not been tested in court. Documents filed by the plaintiffs described how RBI subsidiary TDL Group Ltd. dictated which suppliers franchisees could buy from, the cost of the food they purchased and the prices charged to customers.
Buying from an unauthorized supplier without the parent company’s permission could save money for franchisees – although it would be risky, since the parent can terminate a franchise contract if a restaurant owner violates the terms of the agreement.
An unofficial supplier could undercut the prices of commercial suppliers such as ADP, Mr. Pinho wrote to The Globe, because they do not submit to food safety inspections or shoulder the costs of operating a professional facility. Even though the private investigators reported seeing Mr. Farooq buy chicken at retail stores – which charge a markup – in addition to the wholesalers he visited, he likely had little overhead.
ADP, on the other hand, incurs costs to comply with public health regulations and its clients’ own specifications for approved suppliers, “which increase the sale price of ADP products,” Mr. Pinho wrote. Those costs include professional delivery in refrigerated vehicles, labour related to quality assurance, and safety equipment and cleaning procedures to ensure proper handling of the products.
Concerned about the Popeyes complaints, ADP hired the private investigation firm in May of 2023. Investigators observed Mr. Farooq making weekly deliveries to at least 24 Popeyes locations, according to the amended statement of claim, as well as other unnamed fast-food locations.
Investigators’ reports reviewed by The Globe included photos of a man identified as Mr. Farooq leaving retailers and wholesalers – including Costco and Fu Yao Supermarket stores, and a location called Shivas Chicken Wholesale, with numerous boxes believed to contain raw chicken, which he then took to his house in Scarborough.
In one early report, dated May 26, 2023, Mr. Farooq was photographed leaving the house at 7:49 p.m. in a black Ford F-150 pickup truck, and driving to three Popeyes locations in Toronto and Brampton, a trip that took more than two hours in total. At the last two locations, photos showed the man unloading several boxes from the truck and using a dolly to carry the boxes into unmarked doors identified in the reports as Popeyes locations. The next day, the investigator photographed boxes on the loading dock at Shivas Chicken Wholesale that resembled the boxes and labels observed in Mr. Farooq’s truck.
The investigators continued to generate reports on Mr. Farooq regularly over 12 months, according to Mr. Pinho. In May of 2024, ADP once again reported its findings to RBI.
Concerned about the unusually high volume of Popeyes complaints, ADP hired a private investigation firm in May, 2023. Investigators observed Mr. Farooq making weekly deliveries to at least 24 Popeyes locations, as well as other unnamed fast-food locations.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Shocked and frustrated
That May, ADP had a meeting with Popeyes’ Mr. Brilhante, as well as RBI vice-president of quality assurance Diego Beamonte and the company’s internal counsel, Julia Kim, according to ADP’s lawsuit. ADP provided evidence from the private investigation reports showing Mr. Farooq’s deliveries.
The executives told ADP that RBI would conduct its own investigation, and asked ADP not to report its findings about Mr. Farooq’s activity to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, according to the statement of claim.
ADP kept its private investigator on retainer, who continued to observe Mr. Farooq making deliveries to Popeyes locations for several more months. Meanwhile, ADP was expanding production capacity at RBI’s request to deal with more Popeyes orders in the future, according to the court document.
Then, at the end of 2024, RBI cut off its supply contract with ADP for Popeyes.
“I was shocked and frustrated by the decision,” Mr. Pinho wrote.
By January of 2025, when ADP finally called off the surveillance, the company had spent a total of $250,000 on the private investigation to keep tabs on the unauthorized supplier to Popeyes, and never saw evidence that the activities had been curtailed, according to the statement of claim.
RBI disputes this account. “These allegations need to be viewed through the lens of what we believe this really is – a former supplier who is lashing out after losing our business for a variety of legitimate reasons, including failing a majority of 165 product quality tests we performed on chicken they provided from their facility,” Popeyes spokesperson Ms. Ciantra wrote.
ADP denies that RBI ever informed the company it had failed any such tests.
“ADP was fully aware of their quality failings because the results of these tests were sent by the lab directly to ADP. In addition, Popeyes’ own product quality team raised their quality failings with ADP directly on multiple occasions,” Ms. Ciantra wrote.
ADP, for its part, accuses RBI of its own product-quality issues beyond safety problems. The lawsuit alleges that chicken Mr. Farooq delivered to the restaurants caused religious concerns.
All chicken sold into the Popeyes system must be certified as halal. But Mr. Farooq’s supply was not capable of meeting that designation, according to Mr. Pinho, because halal certification requires products remain in their sealed packaging to avoid contamination. The photos taken by the private investigator often showed Mr. Farooq delivering products in open packaging or in bags, rather than sealed cases, Mr. Pinho added.
The use of the unauthorized supplier “exposed consumers to significant public health and safety risks,” according to the lawsuit, because the chicken sold by Mr. Farooq was in some cases “rotten or expired, and unfit for human consumption.”
A legal battleOpen this photo in gallery:
Mr. Pinho said he was ‘shocked and frustrated’ by RBI’s decision to cut off its supply contract with ADP for Popeyes at the end of 2024.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
ADP launched its lawsuit in April. RBI hasn’t filed a statement of defence.
“This former supplier has piled sensational allegations about our brand on a lawsuit that is a simple dispute about contract law,” Ms. Ciantra wrote. “We will hold them accountable through the legal process. We have 380 restaurants in Canada. In 2022 and 2024, they highlighted between 3-15 restaurants in the GTA for us to look into – which we did.”
ADP is seeking damages including a total of $36-million from Popeyes, its parent company and RSCI related to the alleged unsafe supply, and a further $1-million from RBI and Popeyes for alleged defamation.
ADP is also claiming $10.5-million in total damages from Mr. Farooq. ADP is represented by David S. Brown, partner, corporate strategy and reputation management, and Macdonald Allen, partner, litigation, of WeirFoulds LLP.
Losing the fast-food chain’s business was a blow for ADP – Popeyes accounted for roughly 10 per cent of the company’s revenues. ADP had also invested in new equipment and production capacity after RBI had asked it to prepare for a sizable Burger King contract starting this year that never materialized, according to Mr. Pinho.
He claimed that RBI never provided the “variety” of reasons it claims were the basis for ending the relationship.
“When the issue was reported to them, they cut ties with us.”