14.nov.06
Globe and Mail
Greg McArthur
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061114.BANDIT14/TPStory/Front
For the past two weeks, a 42-year-old employee at a Scarborough food-manufacturing plant has been hunted by corporate lawyers, private investigators and police officers after someone swiped, and attempted to sell, some of the most closely guarded recipes in North America's fast-food industry.
Abdool Gafoor, a Guyanese immigrant and a father of four, has been in hiding since early November, shortly after teams of lawyers and investigators, armed with a court order, swooped in on the homes of his ex-wife, brother and sister, seizing their computers, documents and other belongings.
For the past year, Mr. Gafoor has been a temporary shift worker at the Pharmacy Avenue plant in Scarborough of Griffith Laboratories, a private, Illinois-based company that designs and manufactures the spices, sauces and recipes for popular fast-food restaurants. It calls itself "the food architects."
Griffith regards its client list as confidential, but various media outlets have reported its culinary triumphs: creating the tastes associated with restaurants such as KFC and Bonanza. One report credited Griffith with being behind McDonald's chicken McNuggets.
The story goes on to say that when the company visited http://www.bestbatter.com, it discovered that an undisclosed number of its confidential recipes and formulas were partly posted and up for sale. Portions of the recipes were blacked out, only to be revealed upon payment. Whoever created the site had listed a number of Web-based payment options, including PayPal and Western Union.
Someone had stolen Griffith's confidential formulas, and he or she fancied themselves a crusader.