Who’s to blame when a recall happens? There’s lots of finger pointing by the public, the media, and even recalling companies’ trading partners. While it’s important to understand what happened and how it happened, focusing too much on liability distracts from the real issue: process breakdown.
The restaurant industry has experienced its share of poorly handled food recalls. Over several years, Chipotle had multiple food safety and mismanaged recall incidents. As a result, Chipotle faced significant fallout: plummeting sales, scathing media coverage, huge fines, operational disruption, loss of consumer trust, and serious reputational damage.
The well-known 1993 Jack in the Box crisis put restaurant food safety on the map. This poorly handled, highly publicized recall had errors at multiple points across the supply chain. The contamination source was traced to supplier Vons’ Companies, but by the time Vons recalled their ground beef, major damage had already been done. The crisis resulted in illness and death, as well as significant disruptions, negative media coverage, consumer fear, high costs, and brand damage.
Poorly managed recalls like these illustrate how breakdowns across the chain cause disruption and damage to escalate quickly. Multiple failures can result in increased risks, costs, and harm—and questions about who’s to blame.
Blame Distracts from the Real Issue
Understandably, people have concerns when a recall happens and want to know who’s at fault. There’s often finger pointing in the aftermath of a recall, especially when it was mismanaged. Unfortunately, accountability can be complicated. A supplier may be responsible for the source of contamination, but if a distributor continues to ship recalled product, or a restaurant unknowingly serves it, liability may shift or expand.
Liability shouldn’t be the driving question.Regardless of who may be at fault, every company across the supply chain is responsible for acting swiftly to contain the recall, minimize the damage, and protect public health. Instead of looking for someone to take the fall, build supply chains resilient enough to prevent breaches and contain the damage when they happen.
Build Resilience to Reduce Recall Impact
Recall preparedness is essential for supply chain resilience. However, restaurants can’t become resilient on their own—it’s a collaborative effort across the chain. During a recall, every company across the supply chain has an obligation to work together to protect public health. This requires a mindset shift. Instead of thinking about recalls as individual company activities, consider these events to be a shared supply chain process.
Becoming resilient is a deliberate process that requires thoughtful preparation. Resilient supply chains share systems and data, work collaboratively, and practice responses before a recall occurs. True resilience assumes disruption will happen and prepares as a supply chain to respond properly when it does, using aligned systems, processes, and data.
Resilient supply chains anticipate and mitigate risk, identify and contain issues quickly, communicate clearly, drive proper actions, and minimize damage. Resiliency also relies on visibility and traceability. When trading partners have access to accurate, real-time data on product movement, recalls move faster, scope is defined more precisely, accuracy improves, and execution is more efficient.
When supply chains work together to become resilient—replacing siloed systems and fragmented workflows with connected data, open communication, shared systems, and coordinated action—they’ll experience less damage, disruption, expense, and liability when recalls occur. The converse is also true. If trading partners don’t become resilient and treat recalls as a shared responsibility, it can dramatically increase risks, disruptions, costs, liability, and reputational damage.
Instead of focusing on who’s liable, food brands must do everything they can to become better prepared, more collaborative, and more resilient. Process breakdown turns a recall into a crisis. When restaurants and their supply chain partners establish shared systems, defined roles, and practiced protocols before a recall happens, the response is faster, the damage is smaller, and the public is better protected. Recalls happen to the best of companies. The question is whether your supply chain is ready for them, not whether you can avoid being blamed.
Roger Hancock, CEO of Recall InfoLink, is one of the world’s foremost experts on recalls, with experience that spans the retail, tech, data, regulatory, and supply chain. Recall InfoLink, makes recalls faster, easier, and more accurate across the supply chain to protect consumers and brands. As the only company focused entirely on recalls, Recall InfoLink’s solutions drive immediate action, streamline the recall process, and simplify compliance. Roger is also a steering committee member of the Alliance for Recall Ready Communities.
