What NOT to do when things go south.
We can learn a lot from other businesses’ mistakes. Check out Daily Harvest, for example.
Daily Harvest is a trendy food home delivery service. They are under heavy backlash from their customers following a recall on their lentil and leek crumbles meal. Multiple customers have reported stomach issues after eating this meal.
Users across social media accounts such as Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram have complained about nausea, vomiting, and liver damage symptoms after consuming this dish. Several customers even reported hospitalization.
a food poisoning scandal is sweeping the dtc meal kit influencer space and i simply cannot look away pic.twitter.com/ISPQEFwiHB
— paris martineau (@parismartineau) June 21, 2022
How did Daily Harvest react?
As entrepreneurs, we are all aware that things are going to go wrong from time to time. And as humans, we know that how we respond to these issues determines the future of our business.
Well, Daily Harvest’s social team didn’t get the memo as you’ll see by their response on social.
They issued a recall notice by using a vague aesthetic product image of the questionable lentil meal with a caption that read “UPDATE 6/19: An important message regarding our French Lentil + Leek Crumbles. Link in bio with details.” Daily Harvest’s inability to take control and react with clear communication to aid their customers shows us how NOT to handle an urgent situation. Their ambiguous caption provides no real information or help to their consumers and they have noticed.
They have since deleted the original post from Instagram, but we all know the internet never forgets. This is how they launched their product recall.
As of 10:58 – June 22, 2022 this is how the notice appears on the main page of their website:
Upon further examination, I can find hardly a mention of the recall other than the home page and the actual product listing itself. I did confirm that I was not able to purchase the product through their web-based system at this time. Maybe most of their traffic lands on the home page, but why not go ahead and put the banner at the top of every page until this gets resolved? Not to mention how it appears at the top of the home page. It’s barely noticeable.
If you click on the details, the notice on their website details the steps Daily Harvest claims to be taking to handle the sickness reports from the voluntary recall, to direct consumer communication, and the investigation with the FDA along with current results.
What’s the takeaway?
Do better than Daily Harvest and you’ll already be a winner.
No, seriously you will!
But first, consider posting eye-catching imagery or text for your consumer. The text should be in the image posts themselves and in the captions. Pin it to the top of your social media accounts. Share it to stories. Make sure every page on your website has a banner and it’s noticeable. Over-communicate with your customers.
Do all of these and you’re already beating Daily Harvest.
