A specialty dairy foods producer was targeted after the CDC/FDA linked a multi-state outbreak of listeria to one of its soft cheeses in the absence of product sampling. The producer turned to Padilla to help them with crisis response and strategy.
The Padilla team knew that, due to recent well-publicized similar issues facing other food products, the client needed to work especially diligently to maintain customer and consumer confidence – despite the negative news coming from traditional and social media outlets — and rebuild trust with unprecedented transparency.
The client went above and beyond to protect public health via its voluntary recall of all cheeses from the implicated facility and the suspension of its operations, despite the fact that testing did not detect the pathogen in any of its cheese.
Once operations resumed, business-as-usual returned quickly as a result of the appreciation we helped foster among customers for the client’s plant-level improvements, and the goodwill engendered throughout recall by the hands-on approach taken by company owners and sales force.
The strategy worked. The client was able to quickly recapture sales and trust. The Padilla team gauged customer and consumer response in real-time through intensive news and social media monitoring. No questions were raised about the safety or quality of the cultured products, which helped rebuild trust in our client’s reputation. In addition, demand was strong when operations resumed.
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