How Kraft reacts to a crisis

Corporate Crisis

One of the crises that Kraft has had to deal with over the years was a salmonella outbreak. In March of 2009, Kraft found several traces of salmonella during a routine product check in its California plant.

What exactly happened?

Inspectors that visited Kraft's California plant said that the plant was not separating roasted pistachios from the incoming flow of raw nuts. Raw pistachios carry pathogens that are killed during the roasting process. The reason that this posed a problem was because the roasted nuts were being re-exposed to the harmful bacteria.

How did Kraft's public relations practitioners handle this?

The first group that Kraft alerted was the Food and Drug Administration. Kraft then looked to all of it's brands and products to see which ones contained peanuts or peanut butter. One of the first products that Kraft recalled was its pistachios. Kraft recalled over one million pounds of roasted pistachios as a safety precaution. The FDA also found traces of salmonella in some Baker's Premium White Chocolate Baking Squares, so Kraft recalled that product as well.

Aside from the recalls, Kraft did a great job with making statements such as how they were investigating the situation. Kraft made sure that they let the public know that they were concerned with the situation and that they were working on fixing it.

The Four "R's" of Crisis Management

Regret: telling the public you're sorry that a situation has happened.

• Kraft told the public that they were concerned with the situation, and that they were looking into the details.
  
• SUCCESS.
  

Reform: letting the press/public know what steps you're taking to ensure that this problem won't occur again.

• Kraft did not tell the press or the public whether or not they would be fixing the way that the pistachios are handled.
• FAILURE.
  

Restitution: letting the public know how affected individuals will be compensated.

• Kraft did not make a statement about whether or not there would be compensation for individuals who were affected.
• FAILURE.
  

Responsibility: taking responsibility for solving the problem, despite whether or not the cause of the problem was your fault or not.

• Kraft recalled all peanut-related products from the shelves.
• SUCCESS.
  

My thoughts.

The only thing that I would have done differently would have been to contact loyal Kraft customers. I would have written a brief summary about the situation in the weekly email that Kraft sends out to their email subscribers.

I liked how Kraft didn't make the situation so publicized so that people who weren't aware of the company were scared of buying Kraft products. However, I think that Kraft should have made more of an effort to reach out to loyal customers in hopes of gaining more customer loyalty and respect by keeping them informed on what was going on.