Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream Recall Crisis

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream is a regional ice cream maker based in Columbus OH (Jenis, Jenis About, 2015). In April 2015, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams has issued a voluntary recall of all products due to the possible presence of Listeria. Listeria was first found in a pint of Jeni’s dark chocolate ice cream in a random sample tested by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (Malone, Jeni's finds listeria on pint-filling machine, 2015).While no cases with sicknesses have been reported, the company ceased all sales and closed all scoop shops (Jeni's product recall, 2015). According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Listeria is a bacterium that can cause serious or even fatal infections in kids, elderly individuals, and others who have weak immune system (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015).

Nowadays, food safety is a very sensitive topic to the public, because it threatens local public health, and it can lead to serious damages to both consumers and the companies. In Jeni’s case, the findings of Listeria monocytogenes in their products raised huge concerns to consumers, thus, the company initiated a voluntary recall almost immediately after the incident. The management team of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream handled the crisis proactively. A crisis usually can be a turning point for better or worse, it is not only applies to personal lives, but also applies to the business. A business crisis can be defined as “a low-probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of the organization,” (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015, p. 162) in the business world, crises are categorized into seven families, and in this case, the crisis which Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream is facing can be categorized to physical.

Physical crises mostly involve with industrial accidents, product failures (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015, p. 162), in this case, the products of Jeni’s failed to pass the random testing, as soon as the management of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream receive the feedback, they immediately initialized a recall to all products and closed all productions plants and shops to conduct a thorough investigation. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream chose to get its entire products off the market, rather than recalls that are done in phases. By doing this, consumers will be more confident in the company’s action and think that the company is trying to get it right at the first time.

In addition to physical crises, I also think Jeni’s is facing financial, and company image crises. The quick response wins public trust for the company, in the same time; it brought an economic impact to the company itself. Due to the recall, over 265 tons of Jeni’s products have been destroyed, which cost more than $2.5 million to the company (Malone, Jeni’s cost of dumping inventory: $2.5 million, 2015). Furthermore, Jeni’s employees would not be able to work during the shutdown; they were only able to get partially paid within the shutdown period (Malone, Jeni’s cost of dumping inventory: $2.5 million, 2015). As a regional private held company, Jeni’s has many loyal fans locally and nationwide, the listeria incident might waver their loyalty. However, the steps Jeni’s have been taken provided a positive impact to all crises.

Crisis Management Rules

There are three rules in crisis management; the first rule is “don’t wait.” (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015, p. 163) Moreover, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream did a sound first step by pulling down all products from the shelves nationwide. Safety is always the top concern that consumers have when a food recall is in place. Within the first 12 hours of the crisis, a dedicated page on Jeni’s official site had been set up to provide information about the recall process (Jenis, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 2015). It uses it as a channel to communicate with its customers directly and transparently.

The second rule of crisis management is “Don’t Run from the Truth.” (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015, p. 163) In this Case, John Lowe, CEO of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, stated that they have expects to help them find the problem source, and they were working with supplier to identify whether the bacteria was introduced by one of the ingredients. In addition to that, all plants will remain closed until the threat has been cleared (Chan, 2015). In addition to the dedicated webpage reporting the recall progress, they also set up a call center to support retailer buyers and online shoppers (Jenis, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 2015).

The third rule is “Don’t Hide.” (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015, p. 163) From the beginning of the crisis, Jeni’s acts in a very professional and transparent fashion. They use this crisis to strengthen the customer loyalty, as well as an opportunity to show the sincere and trustworthy to the public.

During the investigation, Jeni’s has been working closely with experts and FDA to identify the source of Listeria, and solutions to prevent this from happening. The inspectors found out that Jeni’s production kitchen did not have proper quality controls, the employees lacked basic sanitation understandings and the management of operations and regulatory lacked competency. They also pointed out that the sanitation procedures were not properly conducted in Jeni’s production work environment (Malone, FDA: Jeni’s failed to follow basic sanitation procedures, 2015). The inspection discovered 11 issues (FDA, 2015) during the investigation, within the shutdown period, Jeni’s has fixed all issues identified by the FDA, and they stepped further in sanitation process and other areas. In June 12, 2015, CEO of Jeni’s has made an update about the second Listeria finding in their production line, he mentioned that this discovering was in the routine monitoring process (Jenis, An update from our CEO John Lowe, 2015). Although this may be another crisis, but in my point of view, it is a proof that what Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream had done is making effort now. They caught the issue before it