A Mouse in a Salad and Owning Mistakes

About a week ago I was listening to a Freakonomis Radio episode called A Mouse in the Salad. What’s the Worst Restaurant Experience You’ve Ever Had?

To cut the story short, what happened was that at the restaurant where Stephen Dubner and James Altucher were having lunch, someone found a mouse in their salad. The shop where this happened is called Le Pain Quotidien, and it's famous for a selection of organic food and well crafted beverages.

When something like this happens, it really challenges the values of the brand. The reality was that this was a mistake, and a big one. What brands usually do when this happens is try to pay their way out of the mistake and keep the noise to a minimum level. What did Le Pain Quotidien do? They acknowledged their mistake. They explained their thinking, stayed honest and really tried to make sure this will never happen again.

The lesson to learn from this is that we are all human and mistakes happen. How we deal with them can make or break our brand. If one of your values is honesty (organic food can be associated with honest food) then when a mistake happens you need to acknowledge it and discuss with your customer why it happened and how you are going to make sure it won't happen again.

How did this play out for Le Pain Quotidien? Not only did it not stigmatise their brand, the lady that had the incident still eats at their shop on a regular basis.