As often after work, Mathieu does his shopping, and in the caddy of this Toulousain, neither frozen pizza, nor Kinder chocolate: “Absolutely not! On the one hand because I eat very little of it and on the other hand, because of the news, I will eat even less of it.” The news is the proven contamination of 50 people by the E.Coli bacterium after having consumed pizzas from the Buitoni brand. Searches took place on Wednesday, April 13, in a factory in the North and at the headquarters of Nestlé. For its part, Kinder has identified 150 cases of salmonellosis in nine European countries including France.
>> Recalls of Kinder chocolates: five questions on the cases of salmonellosis identified in France
Mathieu is obviously not the only one to be influenced by these health scandals, even if the manufacturers have announced the recall of the products concerned. In the frozen section of this Toulouse Intermarché, the fridges are full of pizzas. But customers are rare, laments Philippe Leclerc, the store manager: “There is no one and we can see that sales have dropped”. Frozen pizzas as a whole sell for half as much “since the event“, he specifies. “That is to say that in March 2021, we sold around 1,000. There, we are out of 500.”
But don’t worry, adds the boss: these frozen pizzas will keep for a very long time. The big problem for this professional is on the other side of the store, in the chocolate department. The Kinder brand is being undermined, says Philippe Leclerc: “The big blow is still Kinder with chocolate at this time of year. It falls three weeks before Easter, it’s really exceptional.”
“Kinder and Ferrero are still behemoths. It’s 50% of Easter chocolate sales, it takes away half of our references.”
Philippe Leclerc, Intermarché store managerat franceinfo
Even for products that remain on the shelves, sales are down. Some consumers have lost confidence. “This year, it’s true that with what’s happening at the moment, it doesn’t really make you want to buy, confides a client. My father bought Kinder maxi, it’s not the batches concerned, but we didn’t eat too much. It’s a little scary.” Another client agrees: “Right now I’m hesitating. For Easter, we’re going to do an egg hunt but now I’m a little scared. I’m trying to find another brand.”
Others see it as a positive side. For Matthieu, these scandals within the food industry can encourage consumers to eat better: “We already have enough bad things on our plates.If people can figure out that frozen pizza is not necessarily good. If it allows you to consume less, that’s good, and to consume fresh.”
According to Florian Silnicki, crisis communication expert and president of the LaFrenchCom agency, Buitoni, who was soon to celebrate his 200th birthday, mismanaged communication in this health scandal: “When we talk about victims, especially children, that calls for an embodied response at the highest level of the company. However, here, we did not hear the CEO speak.”
“A brand that manages the crisis it is going through so clumsily can permanently damage the bond of trust with its consumers and therefore disappear. There are no longer any products strong enough to escape this rule”.
Florian Silnicki, communication expertat franceinfo
A danger for the leader Buitoni, with nearly a third of the frozen pizza market, but also for other brands. Picard has understood this and anticipates the questions with a lot of reassuring messages. “A crisis like the one that Buitoni is going through, as we saw with the horsemeat scandal, for example, is necessarily a scandal that affects the whole sector, Florian Silnicki analysis. Beyond lasagna, all products that contained tomato sauce and minced meat suffered from the horsemeat crisis for a long time.