Summiting Mt. Quality

Company management was quick to react in search of answers as well.

A $50,000 reward, which was later upped to $100,000, was offered for verifiable information on the incident.

Calls placed by Food Quality to Wendy’s corporate headquarters were not returned, but USA Today’s Ron Insana, who also hosts CNBC’s Street Signs, recently sat down with Wendy’s Schuessler, who believed that it was a hoax from the start.

Throughout the investigation, Schuessler, Tom Mueller, president and chief operating officer, and other top officials seized the opportunity to talk to the media, showing great restraint and patience during an incident that made its restaurant chain the butt of many jokes on late-night television shows.

“My first response was ‘I cannot believe it.’ And I said, ‘This is a hoax and we have to get to the bottom of it’,” Schuessler told Insana. “As the news got out, we said ‘We have to protect the brand; tell the truth.'”

In addition to cooperating with the police and health officials, the path back to Quality led Wendy’s through its own internal investigation, which included polygraphing restaurant employees and visual inspections to determine if they were any missing fingers. Wendy’s also checked with all suppliers of its chili ingredients and no injuries were reported, as required by government regulations.

“They weren’t missing anything, and the polygraphs came back clean,” Schuessler said. “No one knew anything about it.”

If fact, Schuessler and other Wendy’s officials indicated that independent franchises and employees suffered, as they faced less hours and lay offs.

“These people were victims,” he said, adding that staying the course of action will see Wendy’s back to the proverbial summit. “We just stuck to our core values, doing the right thing, searching out for the truth and listening to the facts. Then, we just made informed decisions.”

Preparedness and QA Sherpas

Making informed decisions is done by “paying attention, being open to every detail and never assuming anything,” says Rich Jochum, who heads legal affairs and quality control for Beef Products Inc., BPI, a processor of boneless, lean beef trimmings based in Dakota Dunes, S.D.

It also helps to have a guide. For those tackling Everest, they will most likely hire a Sherpa, a Tibetan person living in the Nepalese Himalayas, who often serves as a porter on mountain-climbing expeditions.

In manufacturing environments, like those of BPI’s, the Sherpas are one of the 16 quality assurance (QA) managers in its four facilities, who ultimately clear the path and lead the charge up Mount Quality.

Eldon Roth, founder and chairman of BPI uses a different analogy. “A really good QA person is like a fullback on a football team,” he says. “When you need four or five yards, you give the ball to that person, and they will get you there.”

BPI has a series of quality systems that the company says helps it ascend and stay on top of Quality.

First, workers scrutinize federally-approved trimmings that roll on conveyors from fabrication lines from distributors that meet BPI’s raw material specs. The lean material is then recovered with a proprietary process that allows BPI to tailor the fat and moisture content in a product that reportedly finishes at a leanness of 95 percent.

“We test for moisture, fat and protein levels, and then we send it to an independent testing lab for microbial testing,” says Jochum. “No product is released without a full microbial profile and a negative result for E. Coli 0157:H7.”

The product is then treated with a pH-enhancement process using ammonium hydroxide to reduce the E. coli and other pathogens. “At first, food safety costs you money, but in the long run it has been very profitable for us,” Roth says. “The next evolution is to test every serving size; we call a serving size a quarter pound.”