company Strauss Announced a recall for a small quantity that reached the shelves of packages of elite waffle cookies with milk chocolate coating: snack time, snack tortilla and snack spoon fun. These are products that were included in the previous recall that was announced three months ago, most of which were destroyed, but a small part of the products that were not distributed and did not reach the food chains as part of the original recall were not destroyed and were left for testing purposes.
Yesterday, during sorting processes carried out in the company, a mistake was made by two employees who thought that the products that were intended to be sent for proper testing belonged to products that were produced in other factories and that were supposed to be sent for distribution. In total, about 700 packages got on the trucks for distribution, and a smaller part reached the shelves. At the end of the evening, all of them were removed by Strauss, except for a small amount of about 30 units that were sold to consumers.
This is not a recall that approaches the scale of the one carried out in April, and this time too the Ministry of Health and the public were informed in a short period of time from the moment of discovery. So far, there have been no reports of consumers suffering health problems, and perhaps all of these will contribute to Strauss getting through this event without significant damage.
Manage the crisis transparently
Bestraus managed the crisis in the last months transparently and made sure to take responsibility. Starting with an apology, through compensation and ending with the renovation of the two factories in the Nof HaGalil area – one for the liquid chocolate and the other for the chocolate bars. The factory has not yet opened, after at the end of April the ministry decided to suspend the quality standard of the factory for a period of three months. As mentioned, the factory was cleaned and disinfected, but the company also decided to undergo a substantial renovation in order to prepare it in an optimal way for the reopening and the start of production, and currently due to the renovation procedures there is no final date for its opening.
Despite the drop recorded by the stock after the recall and the profit warnings, it has since recovered by 12-13%, along with the recovery experienced by the entire Tel Aviv-35 index. In June, the rating company Midrog left Strauss’ rating Aa1.il and set a negative rating horizon, But she stated that she assumes that over time the company will be able to return to the levels of profitability and coverage ratios that characterized it before the crisis, and that despite the challenges and the one-off damage with the recall event and the partial shutdown at the Sabra plant in the USA, “in the medium-long term the company will increase and maintain a solid business position in light of leading market and leading brands”.
A bigger challenge
Dr. Tali Gazit from the Department of Information Sciences at Bar-Ilan believes that the effect of the recall on social networks is the same as the effect on all other media, only with slightly louder or more heated voices. According to her, “There is no doubt that Strauss faces an even greater challenge than the one they faced last time which went through the acquisition of public trust. When someone makes a mistake once, they say he made a mistake, but whoever makes the same mistake a second time is already a fool, and fools are not trusted.
“‘Kelly’s attribution theory’ can explain this to us really well: the theory shows that when we come across an unusual case (like the recall), we need to take several factors into account before deciding whether the person is to blame (in this case the company – Strauss) or the situation. When it comes In a one-off case, which may also occur in other factories, and has never happened before in the company in question, we are inclined to forgive, to understand that there was a special situation here, and we will return to have a fun time-out, and we will even love it more, because it has become a product unavailable for a long period of time We missed it. We may even trust Strauss products even more, knowing that they have taken responsibility and will not repeat their mistake again. But… here, it is happening to them again. Here we are already attributing what happened not to a mistake but to something systematic, inherent to the company , to their ‘stupidity’, and in such a situation trust will already drop drastically.
Tal Eitan, an expert in digital marketing and a doctoral student in the Department of Information Sciences at Bar-Ilan, adds that “the way to correct the mistake this time is to understand that there is a significant damage to the trust of the customers and to act accordingly. To be transparent, open, to share in the changes behind the scenes, in the review and decision-making processes following the recent cases , and of course, to use ‘social’ information on social media that will be mediated by other people, for example – to use influencers who will come to tour the factory, group managers, this whole world of validation by others.”