[Music] Welcome to our second podcast where

clients first marketing and Communications I'm Jeff bomb you'll see on the screen John clend Denning um hi

folks our first one dealt with the presidential election and we all know what happened there uh the second one

we've seen so many cases of foodborn illnesses recently the syia outbreaks

eoli outbreaks and there's so much in the way of public relations around that

how did these companies perform how resilient is the brand and then where do they go from here so that's the way

we're going to start if you want to know more about our agency please go to our website clientsfirst mc.com with that

let's dive in I thought I'd start out with some stats everyone loves statistics I know John loves statistics

if you take a look through the CDC at the annual burden of food born illnesses

in the United States this past year there were 48 million people who got

sick from foodborn illnesses hospitalizations

128,000 people were hospitalized because of foodborn illness and then deaths

3,000 people died from food born illness now you know why is that the case I mean

you can look at various things like meat and poultry uh well meat and poultry account for fewer illnesses

they're responsible for I'm looking these stats over here so forgive me 29%

of foodborn illness of food born deaths so that's pretty significant um

globalization the global food chains become much more complex and longer due

to Consumer demand for a greater variety of foods climate change and we all have

been affected by that we know what it's been doing to our environment and our wwns and our plants and coral reefs I

you name it um it's become you know a real issue um and it impacts food safety

so with all that in mind let's jump to a couple of discussions case studies and

then John and I will uh fight it out with a steel cage death match in case you're interested in seeing that it's

not gonna be great exactly before you before you dive into uh the first case study here just a quick note Happy

Thanksgiving week to everyone um this is being recorded right the week

before Thanksgiving but we are uh one of the reasons we are doing food today is

because this will show up on on the Monday I believe of Thanksgiving week so

we are nothing if not topical here at on the offense so it's a big food week and

we thought that would be we don't want to get in the way of your Thanksgiving dinner by talking about foodborn

illnesses but food is on the table pardon the punt so over to you Jeff yes

yes and uh if you're really interested in um and you find it entertaining play

our podcast while you eat Thanksgiving dinner um I think that would be very nice for everybody I think they really

enjoy learning about eoli and leria but anyway think I'd rather watch

footb better with with turkey than that exactly hey it's better talking about

that than talking about the election at Thanksgiving dinner yeah we're not going to go there we're not going to go there

I mean it's never a good time to talk about politics at Thanksgiving dinner but I think especially this year yes and

uh yeah there's no better way to bond with family I have two words for you food fight food fight now that might be

the way to settle everything in the United States we have the left versus the right unfortunately we're in the

middle so we're going to get bombarded with food well let's cut to the chase let's cut to the uh actual cases of uh

leria poisoning um Associated we'll start out with Bor head as you all have heard I can't

imagine you hav't at the end of July uh borad had a big outbreak of

leria uh associated with liver worst produced at a plant in Virginia now it's

kind of interesting because in 2022 the USDA did an inspection and

found that plant to be deficient particularly in the areas of you know producing the liver worst um they found

bad sanitary conditions bugs on the floor all kinds of things that needed to

be addressed and in response to that Boris had changed out the Machinery that

was working on the liver worst but never addressed anything else so it's no surprise in fact one of their top

Executives got indicted and I believe was charged recently um in uh in in this

case with regard to the foodborn illness you know at the time of that um Bor had

issued a statement um you know very noncommittal but it was it was fine it

was basically hey we're aware of this we're looking into it we're going to act as soon as we know the facts which isn't

a bad way to start out um I mean it would be my opinion there should be more empathy in that first statement maybe

start out that hey we're really uh disturbed by all these reports of leria

and if it's come from our machine or our plant you know we'll take

responsibility but we don't have the facts yet so we're going to investigate it and as soon as we know more we'll get

back to you and of course we're going to cooperate with the uh with the law enforcement officials I have a cold so

if you think I sound like U I don't know like sandpaper that's why I'm sorry about that I think you sound better than

ever I like the new the new sound I think you should I think you should take some meds to maintain your cold

oh continue to sound like this I like it I I guess I like it too interesting when

you look at borsh head and Bor heads are a premium product you know if you see it

in stores you know oh this must be a pretty good place because they stock Bor head and Bor has head has a an amazing

variety of lunch meats hummus you know what have you and it I mean for us it's

always been high quality we know that or we thought that if you have head you know you run a pretty good ship and uh

so that's why it was really kind of disturbing when this happened I was reading an article in the New York Times

I'll quote I'll quote a few things in here the title of it was secretive Dynasty that controls the Bor head brand

and that's been like at the Forefront of everything they've done since they were founded they don't publicize their

leadership their leadership just hangs way in the background um it's really controlled by two different families

um and they go head-to-head on all kinds of conflicts and there's a lot of um competition within the company itself so

when all this happened you know one of the things you want to do in a crisis response is be very transparent uh you

want to be there you want people to know hey we're going to deal with this in the meantime we'll get back to you you know

I just promise them continuous response orad really didn't do that and they

delayed the response by a few days which probably isn't the greatest thing in the world and the first statement was one of

like I said you know we we're investigating we'll get back to you and food safety is a priority for us um

which is fine but they didn't even sign it by person they signed it Bor head I don't want to get into you know the the

factoids about the Family itself but there there are two different families involved and I'm going to stare at my

iPhone so I can just tell you what their names are Bron hor and the Bish offs and

they founded it way way way back in the early 1900s and originally started in Brooklyn

New York where they ran a food truck that distributed deli meats it became so

popular they decided to make it into a store-bought brand and they converted to

that and they're very particular about borsh head they wanted to Market it as a

premium brand in dealing with supermarkets or any Outlet that sold Bor

head they would go in and they'd make an agreement okay if you're going to sell Bor head we're going to be the lone

premium brand that you sell you can't sell Deets and Watson you can't sell any of the other brands and they they ver

they're very uh stringent about that that's great because you go into a store you say B's head oh this is good stuff

but it's a little hard for a lot of supermarkets to comply with so that's one of the one of the pieces of the

puzzle but when this all happened you know they never really acknowledged the

fact they were being investigated back in 2022 with similar problems and eventually they expanded to every meat

that was produced at the uh facility and I believe was Jared Virginia um which

they've subsequently shut down and that employs thousands of people and has a

big economic impact on that part of the state so it's a big deal now I've got to

tell you I still have and I this probably misguided but uh a loyalty in a

weird way to the borsh Head brand I went into the supermarket the other day at a store that sold B's head and I I went up

to the counter and I saw all these delicious Meats all labeled Wars head

and I really didn't hesitate to buy them so if that says anything it either says

I'm really stupid it's just the power of brand loyalty at work right there's a

perfect example you had done your homework on this case study for the purposes of prepping for this podcast so

you knew more than most yet you still went up to the counter and were leaning toward the board's head I it's just

brand loyalty and it shows How Deeply ingrained it it is or can be if a

company is doing the right things over time right and it helps you it helps

keep you afloat if you will when times are bad yeah and if if you look back

several years um I know here in Texas and I'm not a Texas native but we've

both lived here for 24 years Bluebell which is a really prestigious delicious

ice cream produced here um it had a a huge recall and it it involved multiple

Brands and a facility and that brand was so resilient as soon as it went back

online it was even more popular than it was before so that says and the and the

case that John's going to discuss is McDonald's you know what's more Americana than a Big Mac or a quarter

pounder with cheese which was the uh product in question in this case but you know what's more American than going to

your local McDonald's and getting those delicious fries and seeing the golden arches so Jeffrey thank you for the

setup that was uh perfect to get me going on McDonald's and so we're gon to

take a look uh we're gonna we're going to take a step back at the supersized

reach get it super sized reach of McDonald's in the fabric of modern

American life so McDonald's started way back in 1954 with Ray Croc who founded

the first McDonald's in uh Jeff you know where the first McDonald's was well I

believe it was in California but it was founded by the McDonald's brothers who Ray Croc put the squeeze on yes Michael

the Michael Keaton movie right correct the first McDonald's was in San

Bernardino California which is the unofficial capital of the Inland Empire

region of Southern California that was 1954 so this is I believe their 70th

anniversary of McDonald's it uh all worked out quite well for Mr croc in the end he had enough money thanks to uh

selling burgers to buy eventually the San Diego Padres but today today there

are more than 36,000 McDonald's restaurants in more

than 100 countries so clearly this is a global phenomenon not just an American

one I'm looking at my factoid as well here more than 300 billion with a bee

McDonald's burgers have been sold more than 68 million million with an M people are

served at McDonald's on average every day 68 million

Inc it's it's unbelievable my favorite factoid on McDonald's is one out of

every eight Americans one out of every eight have worked at McDonald's and at

some point in their life me too I'm part of that the company's stock is considered a barometer for the stock

market in terms in terms of consumer purchasing um so when there's a crisis

at McDonald's people feel it so my daughters uh one of whom is our director

you can't see here hi Caroline they are obsessed with their favorite murder

podcast called I think it's called My Favorite murder and the way The Two Hosts do that podcast is one of them

does the homework and they present it and then the other person reacts to it uh and then they do a second one and

then it's vice versa so Jeff did the uh the homework on borad I've done the homework on McDonald so Jeff looking

forward to hearing what you have to say about this one so what apparently occurred uh with McDonald's uh started

in late September and it went into October so people started getting sick

after eating Quarter Pounders with the problem spreading to 13 states mainly in

the in the Mountain West area of the country uh Wyoming Colorado Dakota's

kind of up there tests revealed that the problem was that the burgers were

infested with eoli BAC IA ultimately 75

people reported becoming ill and one person actually died in Colorado so I mean this is It's just terrible um I

think the number of deaths has risen considerably since then I think it's like nine or 10 you're kidding okay well

that's even worse I mean that's just a nightmare further investigation revealed the culprit not

the beef patties themselves but rather the quote sliver

onions that Adorn them along with all of the if you will cheesy goodness uh

around it now where do these slivered onions come from they come from one of

these I have props wow look at that the yellow onion right right this is a

yellow onion and apparently the problem was with the yellow onion supplier of

McDonald's okay now so not McDonald's itself but when you have your own supply

chain you have to speak for you have to own your supply chain so the company first pulled the quarter pounder off the

menu in those 13 states then returned the burger to the menu without the

aformentioned slivered onions and that affected uh about 900 locations across

those States so the question then is where did the onions come from well they came from a regional McDonald's supplier

now you named names in your example chat I'm going to do the same I hope they don't get upset but the onions came from

a regional McDonald's supplier called Taylor Farms which is apparently a

multi-state producer of vegetables and fruits they put out a statement in

October saying that it that they Taylor Farms had recalled several yellow onion

products because of potential Ecco like contamination Jeff take a look at this yellow onion see this bad boy right here

do you think yeah it's beautiful can you see any eoli on it I'm gonna it micros

you don't see any eoli and apparently the you know it's uh guilt by

association other fast food chains also stopped offering onions Taco Bell Pizza

Hut KFC and Burger King among them so the entire onion family uh if you will

was uh Under Suspicion let's I have to say it let's

peel back the onion you get it you're really funny yeah let's peel back the

onion did McDonald's I had to I had to go there how did McDonald's handle the

situation pr- wise frankly I would give the company very high marks in terms of

how they handled it um because Jeff you mentioned transparency and transparency

is so critical in a crisis you you have to communicate as proactively as you

possibly can yes the lawyers are involved yes they're watching every word yes you have to be careful of everything

you say but as transparent as you can be you're going to be better off almost every time right and and that's the way

McDonald's handled it so they put out several announcements um informing the

public of what was going on and what was being done about it they put their US president on the Today Show so that's

extra transparency right that's not just posting announcements that's saying uh

to this guy we're going to put you on live television with millions and millions of people they worked very

closely with food safety authorities and they contined to uh post new updates on

their website including and this is my favorite part their own internal

employee messages and those those weren't leaked if you will that sometimes happens in

cases like this right they were proactively posted th those of you who are loyal viewers of this now

two uh episode old podcast will will recall that yeah we talked about the

election last time and McDonald's was also in the news for when Trump went to the McDonald's uh in whatever state that

was a week or two before the election I think it's Pennsylvania where where you sered french fries now yeah uh in that

case there were a lot of people said oh well you know when you do something like that half people are going to be happy

half the people aren't going to like it so for the people who didn't like it they sent out an employee message there

as well and they also proactively posted that on their website so it's you know it's one thing to be transparent with

your external information it's an entirely different thing to be posting your

internal information so I I really do give them um High marks for for that and

and I've read both of those messages and they're very clearly carefully crafted but

they're very well done the only thing they've been dinged on from some Outsiders is not closing stores entirely

and now why didn't they do that the company addressed that uh and it said it didn't do that because of the confidence

it had in its food preparation and safety practices so again remember the

uh slivered onions did not come from them now that doesn't mean that you still have to in store put everything

together but they had full confidence in that and it's not like people were saying that their food safety practices

in the stores were problematic so so they didn't uh close stores uh as a result of any of this let's talk about

results and takeaways most importantly I can joke all I want with the props here people died right and so you know you're

in the food business and you've got a crisis it's one thing to get hacked but you're in

the food business people can die from eating your product so this is not a laughing matter in any way not to

mention all of the other people who got sick and had to go to the hospital just terrible having said that short to

medium-term financially foot traffic was down 99.5% nationally I don't know exactly

from my notes how long after this went public that that that 99.5% hit or

stayed that way that's a lot of money I mean what was it 68 million people served on aage average at McDonald's

every day you whatever that translates to in terms of daily revenue you take

99.5% off of that that's a huge hit foot traffic 99.5% down nationally but in

Colorado and Wyoming 33% down think of the financial hit that

caused the franchisee in those States huge the other thing was that H this

happened right at the end of the third quarter and into the beginning of the fourth quarter they have since reported

their Q3 earnings and they addressed this rightfully on their earnings call

and they said that there would be no quote material effect on F year numbers based on these decreases in foot traffic

that doesn't mean there's no effect it means there's no material effect and this isn't the time to get into earnings

verbiage but um they did address it on their earnings call longer term I would

argue both for McDonald's and other fast food chains and just food in general

when things like this happened Bor head McDonald's we're going to talk about carrots as well and Rumor Has It Jeff I

may have a carrot prop as well oh that's a teaser for the audience so but no

things like this happen and and several of these things have happened to Jeff's earlier point it it opens up discussions

and questions about food safety in general and and no one wins when that

happens right and so you know I'm I I I have to assume that any any other

company that serves onions has probably spent some internal time looking at their supply chain uh figuring out how

to handle it perhaps updating their crisis plan uh which every food and

beverage company should have been doing the second this stuff went public right but I think takeaways McDonald's you

know you mentioned your brand loyalty Jeff to Bor head McDonald's has built

quite a bit of trust over time their their Communications people are among

the best in the business their food safety practices are considered Best in Class and as a result of that in in

addition to a result of how they handled this um I would argue they're going to get through this just fine and they

appear to have have done that and appear to be doing that of course if it happens again once is once twice as a trend

we'll we'll have to see right I would also be interested to see how this has

affected their relationship with that supplier I also wonder if other suppliers and one can only imagine how

many different suppliers McDonald's has right they're probably updating their own crisis plans right I would so and

they're probably more under the microscope with McDonald's and you lose a client like McDonald's you are going

to have a material effect on you a huge impact right so there there is a uh

there's a mushroom effect here of a lot of people being affected by this not just McDonald's yeah one other thing I'd

add on McDonald's though I thought it was really interesting that their supplier of chopped onions is a

different company so anything that includes chopped onions was fine so I

thought uh wow that is a an incredibly precise supply chain so back to you know

this this whole uh my favorite murder things Jeff did Bor head I did McDonald's I'm GNA turn it back over to

Jeff for carrots carrots now this is kind of an odd case it happened really

recently and it's a whole eoli rck that's associated with carrots and

organic carrots sold at some of the most prestigious outlets in the US if you go

to a specialty grocery store or you know a number of really prominent Brands I

won't bring him up so uh oh my God look at that he even has the top on it I have

another prop was that not only is this not only is this a carrot Jeff this is an organic

carrot okay you're now contaminated with ecoli

purchased at Tom Thumb which is a premier grocery store chain right now as

with the yellow onion I posed the same question do you see any ecoli on this no

invisible even the little baby carrots and just here's a little factoid if you didn't know there's no such thing as a

baby carrot those are big carrots that are scored down to the size of baby

carrots had no idea so I wonder I wonder if baby carrots have baby

ecoli they may they may which is even smaller smaller amounts of microscopic

ecoli eoli it's eoli and eoli is a bad thing don't want to be too humorous

about that because it it can be deadly on most cases it's not but but it can be

what is the singular of ecoli ecoli sounds plural um I I have no idea actually

never anything singular on Eola eolus eolus okay but if you have two euses you

have eoli my wife is on the other side of the computer and she's saying oh God under her breath were have there been

announcements made by carrot Growers or supply has anyone taken ownership of

it's not like you can tie this to a a retailer like the yeah now I I I think

it came out from the USDA I think the carrot producers have said some stuff about it I haven't looked so deeply into

this case compared to the other ones but I find it very interesting and when you hear vegetable recalls like that and I

mean we we try to buy organic more than other types of vegetables but it's usually organic stuff um you know

pesticides I guess have a purpose and this is one of the reasons why I think you know a lot of these recalls hit

organic specialty grocery stores theoretically you're buying a healthier

product if it's organic and I found out something else is there's no one definition of what is

organic which seems to me like they'd be better off you know creating one just so

you know what you're buying you know you know what I think the the takeaway here is eat more processed foods yes they're

great for you if meat comes in a can eat it and uh that's an advertisement for spam I think

it's really interesting and uh um you know that's one of the Hallmarks of living in the US how much processed food

you eat how much processed food you have access to how much sugar and salt and

different products that aren't really good for you are in our foods and uh and

that's something we might need to take a look at but in the meantime as long as we have to go through these food born

illness crisis um I think you have to look at your process around handling a crisis how you

involve everybody in your company your transparency getting out there with

something empathetic because you know you don't only want to be a great food producer but you want to be a uh a good

citizen and a good neighbor and if you can appear to be open empathetic and uh

and And Timely that really helps in preserving your brand and your ability

to bounce back from future crises you know we call this podcast on the offense

for many reasons the most important one is our view is that all marketing and

all communication should be managed in a very proactive aggressive manner crisis

by its very nature is reactive you are reacting to a crisis but our view is if

you don't have a fome crisis plan in place you're not being on the offense right you can't wait for

this stuff to hit and then react because you're already behind the new cycle is what it is social you got to have your

plans in place ahead of time regardless of what kind of company you have what I've done in in my time leading Cris

crisis development is you know the first thing you do it's actually kind of sick fun really you can bring a bunch of

people into a conference room okay everyone what are the worst things that could Poss possibly happen to this

company and you get into a lot of really random stuff right but you just never

know what kind of a crisis is going to hit so you have to have everything covered in advance that could reasonably

occur to your company and again if you're in the food and beverage business hugely important some sort of

contamination has got to be at the top of your list um and I would also argue that if you have a supply chain

supplying you things it's one thing to hope that your suppliers have a crisis

plan I'd make it mandatory that they have a crisis plan and that you get a chance to review that crisis plan

because you're the boss they are your supplier right so in the case of farms

let's hope they had one um if they had one it would be interesting to know if McDonald's Had reviewed and approved it

right because sometimes this is about the supplier um and not the person or the

company with their name on the door I think I think that's right what one of the things about McDonald's that I find

so interesting and I think that's what Ray Croc found so interesting was the way everything was standardized the way

they prepared things they did everything the same they had a very small group of products they produced them they always

tasted good wherever they were they had wonderful french fries they had shakes

and drinks and it was simple simple could be replicated any place and the

way they made things was all the same any McDonald's you go into they've got a

um a big it's like a huge Skillet one side you do the little burgers on the others is the quarter pound Grill they

always put me on the quarter pound Grill because I was slow you know we can have fun with this stuff it is very serious

uh in cases where people are are dying oh it is it's super serious and I think

one thing with you have with MC one thing you have with McDonald's and other uh food companies like fast

food they're all franchisees who run them there are very few store right

stores run by the company itself those franchisees have to be in compliance

with the standards that McDonald's puts in place so that really ensures the fact

that if you go to McDonald's in Dallas or in New York or in California or in

Madrid I mean I went to one in Madrid the products are all the same you know they taste the same which to me being

abroad and eating wonderful Spanish foods for a week or two you know having

a quarter pounder with cheese which is what I had in Madrid was kind of like bringing home a little bit of you know

what we live with here which I find a comfort food one thing one little

advertisement for McDonald's was way back when I worked for them they were incredibly cleanly and they were very

focused on cleanliness I believe that and you know they inspected those places every night

so I think you can believe in the quality at least in the preparation of

stuff at McDonald's the other thing is if everything tastes the same if everything's the same no matter where

you are one would think that that their food safety practices are also uniform

so it's surprising you know in a sense that they've had this problem but again when you got a supply chain you have to

own that right we are about out of time may I um say a couple of words about

Thanksgiving and closing Mr Jeff please please I have three pieces of advice for

those of you as you sit down for your Thanksgiving dinner number one do not do

not watch the Dallas Cowboys

play during your Thanksgiving dinner almost invariably unless you are a fan

of the Washington Comm commanders they are going to ruin your Thanksgiving dinner they are going they are a

Thanksgiving dinner Ruiner agreed right I think most of us would agree on that

anyone who's watched them would agree avoid the Cowboys protect your Thanksgiving meal

the second piece of advice I have is be careful uh

with slivered onions if anyone is having turkey

cranberry sauce this and that and slivered onions be careful so I have a

slogan Jeff to suggest for Thanksgiving relative to slivered onions don't

deliver the SLI very nice you like that all right and then I have one more

slogan and then I'll turn it over to you to close us out the second slogan I have

to suggest for Thanksgiving has nothing to do with with contaminated food or

anything like that it has to do with the one and only Thanksgiving item

traditional Thanksgiving item that I loathe I like potatoes probably more than the average

person I mean who doesn't like potatoes right love potatoes with one exception I

despise yams yams are bad they should be removed from the Thanksgiving vacation

and so I do not have a yam here to hold up but I do have a slogan to suggest for

Thanksgiving dinner are you ready I'm I'm there scram from the yam scram from

the yam don't deliver the sliver don't watch the Cowboys back to

you you know what I've got to disagree with you on the yam uh I'm not a huge fan of plain sliced yams but when

they're in a casserole covered with some brown sugar cinnamon a crust on the top

that's a tasty meal it ruins the casserole the casserole is ruined I I beg to disagree with you on that and Y I

apologize that I'm yucking your yum uh and and also I I think it's really important that you have the uh green

bean casserole with the onion ring topping as long as the onion rings are not sliber no they're the uh the dried

mccormic or whatever they are that come in the little can so be careful but most

of all enjoy the big turkey enjoy the chopped onions enjoy the non um

contaminated carrots and all the other things that you may eat also enjoy a

nice pumpkin pie a pecan pie oh or ham or whatever you choose have a wonderful

Thanksgiving enjoy your time with family enjoy your days off and um I hope you

join us again for our next podcast we we are even entertaining maybe having like a panel discussion do some interviews

we're going to try to change it up months to come so uh John any last words

no I would just say have a happy and yes healthy Thanksgiving thanks everyone and

hey don't forget to uh check us out on all the social media channels which you

can find at our website and also on our website itself and if I tried to say our

website's name I would stumble on that so um you can you can all figure that out on your own all right everyone so

long happy holiday