Word: taco
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...Taco Bell's president, Greg Creed, has posted three short statements on the restaurant's web site since the outbreak was linked to the chain on Monday. Even those written statements were late in coming, says Timothy Coombs, a crisis management expert at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill. "The story broke Monday morning and Taco Bell did not have anything up until later that evening," Coombs says. "People were looking for information online and there was nothing there...
...Creed should have held a news conference or made himself immediately available to reporters, says Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, a California-based consulting group. But the president has yet to do so, even as new cases of E. coli are reported. "Taco Bell is hiding behind the written word," Bernstein says. "The moment there is a threat to health or safety, that mandates the involvement and personal presence of the company's president. This action communicates to the public that the company cares and it ensures stakeholders that the company is doing the right thing...
...Taco Bell may have also confused the public by closing and then reopening restaurants, even though the source of the contamination is still unknown. "Some would say that was a sign of being proactive: closing the store in order to protect the consumer," says Steven Fink, president of Lexicon Communications Corps, the nation's oldest crisis management firm. "But then Taco Bell reopened the stores and nothing had changed. Why did they close the stores and then reopen them? That sends a mixed signal that the company doesn't have a handle on what's going...
...Wendy's finger episode turned out to have been a hoax. Taco Bell faces a more challenging public-relations task, since the E. coli outbreak could raise health concerns about the chain that will far outlast the specific threat...
...Fink suggests that Taco Bell replace all of its suppliers until the source of contamination is found. That's what he did while overseeing 2003 E. coli outbreak at Pat & Oscar's, a restaurant chain based in southern California. "Taco Bell needs to send a clear message to the customers that they are going the extra mile to protect them - that has not come across in anything I have seen yet," says Fink...