McDonald’s Missed One Lesson From Chipotle’s E. Coli Crisis
The burger giant has avoided many of the mistakes Chipotle made — but both companies displayed a stomach-churning lack of empathy.
I’m passin’ on it.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Consumers make choices about what and where they’ll eat based on quality, convenience and price. But higher on the hierarchy of needs is the basic requirement that the food you eat not make you sick — or, worst case scenario, kill you. When a brand needs to convince customers that its food won’t do the latter, it’s in deep trouble.
McDonald’s Corp. 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 period spanning September and October.