Happy Friday!
Welcome to our new weekly blog column, A La Carte! Many of our client partners are innovators in the food and restaurant space, which means we spend quite a bit of time researching food PR industry news and social media trends every week. Despite how hungry this process can make us, the result is finding fresh, inspiring content and industry trends within the food and restaurant space.
You can expect an ‘A La Carte’ portion of food PR, industry and social media must-reads each Friday from here on out. Be sure to subscribe to our blog to ensure you don’t miss a bite. Here’s what’s on the menu this week:
Social Spotlight
Last week Coca-Cola launched its latest campaign, “Taste the Feeling.” This comprehensive campaign included several commercials, engaging social posts, and even a “GIF The Feeling” website to make your own Taste the Feeling GIF – seriously! Taste the Feeling yourself on Twitter.
Trend Watch: Food + Restaurant Industry News
As Chipotle’s E.coli crisis continues, food safety is on everyone’s mind. Consumers are becoming more aware of the dangers of mishandled food, and other food service companies are starting to think about how they would handle a contamination crisis. Ninety-five-year old burger chain White Castle took a big move in the right direction.
Columbus-based White Castle created a new site called White Castle Clean, where it openly shared nearly all of its stores’ food safety scores online, as well as the company’s food safety history and facts about food borne illnesses. While White Castle stated it did not do this in response to the Chipotle’s crisis, this move is happening at an opportune time, and is helping to reassure its customers that its burgers and restaurants are safe.
With the Chipotle E. coli crisis being one of the most attention-grabbing food safety stories in recent memory, we think many more brands will continue to be proactive about avoiding food contamination and increasing transparency with consumers.
PR Lesson of the Week
This brings us to our PR Lesson of the Week: in times of crisis, communicate often and communicate well, especially in the area of food PR. For an excellent example of the power of communication in crisis, look at how Columbus-local Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams communicated early and often and maintained transparency despite a crisis. When it comes to public safety, it’s essential that food and restaurant brands show how much they care about their customers’ health.
Chipotle’s crisis continues to hit the brand hard, but it has done an admirable job of communicating since the first outbreak. Chipotle consistently shares news about the situation and communicates openly about the measures it is taking to correct it. It has also developed a page on its website dedicated to informing consumers about food safety updates, and is even planning on shutting down stores on February 8, 2016 to have a company-wide food safety meeting. We commend you, Chipotle!
Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to take this post ‘A La Carte’ and we’ll see you next week.
What food trends have you seen this week? Share them with us in the comments!
