McDonald’s forgot a key lesson from Chipotle’s E. coli crisis
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Consumers make choices about what and where they’ll eat based on quality, convenience and price. But higher up the hierarchy of needs is the requirement that the food you eat not sicken you—or, in a worst-case scenario, prove fatal.
If a brand needs to convince customers that its food won’t do the latter, it’s in deep trouble. McDonald’s entered that territory this week when news broke that its Quarter Pounder was the source of an E. coli outbreak across 10 states that had killed one person and sickened dozens over a two-week span recently.
While more cases may emerge, McDonald’s isn’t close to a Chipotle circa 2015 situation—at least not yet. Nearly a decade ago, the burrito chain dominated headlines for months when a string of norovirus, E. coli and salmonella outbreaks poisoned hundreds of customers.
The number of incidents gave the impression that the situation had spiralled out of the company’s control. It took years for the brand to fully repair its reputation, requiring a full-on management overhaul to convince diners that it was safe to eat at the chain again. Unlike Chipotle, McDonald’s has long had a stellar food-safety reputation, which makes this occurrence seem more like an anomaly than an issue with its overall system.
Don Schaffner, a professor of food science at Rutgers, told me what most surprised him about the whole thing was that McDonald’s was the source of the outbreak. When he heard the news, he said “my jaw dropped." McDonald’s commitment to food safety goes back to 1982, when its burgers in Oregon and Michigan were discovered to have sickened customers. The episode didn’t get much press at the time, and it wouldn’t be until Jack in the Box’s deadly outbreak a
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