How to Prepare a Quick Response to a Food Safety Crisis

Neil Steinberg, vice president, public relations and communications for Dataminr, a New York-based technology company that discovers high-impact breaking information from social media in real time, opines that brands are looking at the general conversation on social media to get a better grasp on how it’s evolving in real time, both positively and negatively.

“Additionally, they’re focusing on specific hashtags—how many people are retweeting and interacting with a specific hashtag, and how far their message or campaign is getting out there,” he says. “Supply chain, employee behaviors, and sub-standard prep conditions are among the key triggers as it relates to food safety issues. For food brands, many of these issues can be discovered through social listening.”

The ability to monitor, capture, and react to this content early allows brands to kick-start a crisis response and mitigate risk. This also allows them to determine if the issue is specific to a certain store as it relates to a national chain (e.g. the Buffalo Wild Wings  chicken head issue), an employee, or something with a larger scope, such as a supplier that may trigger a regional or even a national recall.

“As it relates to food and beverage crises, social media can both discover, validate, and ultimately respond to a crisis,” Steinberg says. “While social media is often the tripwire of a crisis, embracing the medium enables brands to get in front of a situation from a public affairs and customer relations perspective before it spirals out of control.”

Additionally, from a customer perspective, customers are utilizing social media more than ever to voice their complaints and highlight issues in a public manner, which adds increasing pressure for brands to act quickly and efficiently.

A Stronger Connection

No matter the social network (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc.), blog, or online forum, the social web is offering customers a more personal connection, which is why social media involvement is vital in a crisis.

“Hearing about a crisis before the issue has snowballed and developed is important because consumers can be protected and reassured that they are doing business with a firm that cares,” Bentele shares. “If managed effectively, social media channels enable a company involved in a crisis to manage the issue more closely and move an issue into an offline environment where the full facts can be identified.”

One example of where social media formed part of the process was when the Greek-style yogurt company Chobani had an issue on Aug. 26, 2013. Customers complained that products were exploding and that mold was found inside, and more than 30 social media stories were posted about the issue that day.

Chobani quietly communicated the issuance of a voluntary withdrawal to stores, instructing them to remove the affected products. It wasn’t until September 5, however, that Chobani addressed the problem head on and set up an aggressive campaign.

“A Facebook post was issued reporting that a decision had been made to remove yogurt from selected stores due to ‘isolated quality concerns.’” Bentele says. “To note, carrying out a withdrawal rather than a recall did lead to some criticism on social media channels as the company was perceived as not having taken the issue seriously enough.”

In March of 2015, the outbreak of the H5N2 avian influenza (bird flu) was the largest in U.S. history and ravaged the Midwest’s poultry population. Steinberg notes Dataminr was able to provide real-time notifications as the outbreak impacted supply, production, and sales for commercial poultry processing and biotech companies. These notifications kept things from escalating due to false information spreading.

A report in socialmedia.com revealed that 71 percent of consumers who have had a positive social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. Companies that used one of the more popular social media channels when informing consumers of product or packaging problems suffered from less of a negative sales reaction than organizations that didn’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts.