This previous spring wasn’t an excessively joyous time for Domino’s Pizza. In April, an worker at a franchised retailer in Conover, North Carolina, used a video digicam to doc her co-worker within the act of violating quite a few meals security measures. The pizza maker — really, he was establishing sandwiches on the time — made tons of of 1000’s of stomachs flip within the video that rapidly went viral on YouTube.
It was a nightmare for the supply large, which already was fighting lackluster gross sales in its U.S. shops. Due to the motion of two wayward people, a model that has constructed a repute over half a century was rapidly and severely broken. That’s the facility of the Web. That’s the facility websites like Twitter, Fb, MySpace and YouTube wield.
Although it’s now June, I’m penning this column in April. Domino’s is getting blended opinions for its response to the disaster, and rightfully so. Whereas I sympathize with the place through which Domino’s discovered itself after the video bought traction, I can’t perceive why it took the corporate so lengthy to enter crisis-response mode. We now reside in an age the place info hits the plenty instantaneously — however Domino’s didn’t have any significant response to the video till two days after it was first posted on YouTube. Within the meantime, the issue solely worsened as extra folks considered the video and blogged about it on-line.
Maybe the Domino’s braintrust hoped the video would go unnoticed in the event that they didn’t draw consideration to it. Maybe, being a large, the corporate merely strikes slowly by advantage of the quantity of purple tape it has to chop to get something achieved. I don’t know. However I do know this: for customers, the video was the last word scarecrow.
“How typically does that occur in different Domino’s shops?” Individuals logically questioned. However the video didn’t simply taint the Michigan-based franchise — it tainted all eating places, in my view. If this will occur in a Domino’s retailer in North Carolina, is it out of the query that it will possibly additionally occur in an impartial pizzeria in Des Moines or a seafood restaurant in Portland?
It’s no secret that issues like this happen on occasion in skilled kitchens. Although the foodservice trade does its greatest to cover such instances, I’ve labored in sufficient eating places and have watched sufficient hidden-camera tv exhibits to know that the general public can’t at all times belief those that deal with its meals.
Fortunately, acts of this nature are few and much between. The overwhelming majority of foodservice staff are trustworthy, safety-conscious individuals who understand their actions can have an effect on the well being of others.
However the hoards that considered the embarrassing Domino’s video can’t be faulted for questioning how prevalent these acts are throughout the foodservice trade. Proper or fallacious, all eating places are going through a public indictment over this — yours included. You’ll be able to’t be in your restaurant always, however you might be chargeable for what occurs in it, even whilst you’re away. Should you’ve not already taken steps to make sure one thing like this doesn’t occur to you, accomplish that now, earlier than it’s too late.
Greatest,
Jeremy White, editor-in-chief
