Hesburger's crisis communication

My next task was to analyze some organization's crisis. I chose Hesburger's crisis that happened in July this year. It was actually a leak from inside. Hesburger's employees got e-mails, which told them to remove worms form salad. One of them decided to put the picture of it to Facebook where it started to spread very quickly. Soon many online newspapers wrote about it and even Reporter made a story. People were most shocked by the fact that the manager told employees to remove worms but still use the salad.

So what did Hesburger do about it? Their development director told to Õhtuleht that quality is very important to Hesburger and the mail was sent only to make an extra control. (Õhtuleht, 2012)

After veterinarian office's checking they threw away the salad because some worms were really found.

Emphasising their interest in best quality was a good step but I think they should have done more. I didn't saw any apologize from them. Yes, apologizing shows that they admit their guilt, but in that case, it was obvious anyway and denial would have done it only worse. Fortunately they didn't deny it. As next step I would have scapegoated the one who sent the e-mail. It was actually done but they told it only to veterinarian office who mentioned it in Delfi's article. I think it should have been Hesburgers most important defence for themselves. Saying that it was one person's mistake and Hesburger usually don't tolerate this kind of action would have done them more faithworthy. I also think they should have thrown away all the suspicious salad immediately when the crisis occured.

Some people think that this crisis was made from Hesburger itself to get attention. The numbers of sale actually started to rise after the crisis. It sure got them a lot of attention.

Even if it wasn't made from them, I think Hesburger was strongly responsible for the crisis but they got over it and even increased the number of sales so they did a good job.