Dagoba chocolate lovers like myself were certainly surprised to learn about their product recall the other day due to unacceptable levels of lead in some of their chocolates. That's a tough bitter pill to swallow if you've checked the recalled lot numbers and matched one of them up with a bar you've been munching on this past week... even worse if one of your kids has been eating it too.
Not good at all, and as consumers we could talk about this all day which some are doing over at Jack Bog's Blog, but I'm going to try to put the perspective of the manufacturer (or vendor as it is better known in the industry) into this unfortunate story because as a fellow vendor in the natural foods bidness I can sympathize to some degree with what the owners of Dagoba are going through.
First off, I have yet to meet an Oregon natural foods company who's owners don't have their hearts and souls invested in their companies. We care deeply about the quality of our products and the customers who buy them. As I've noted in a previous post, gourmet and natural food companies in Oregon have an outstanding reputation in the industry. So when something goes wrong not only do we feel terrible, but we do everything possible to correct it.
When I first started my bidness, I also had to do a product recall. All I could think about was the customers who had purchased my bad product. I received plenty of e-mails and calls from shocked consumers who had opened a jar of one my curry sauces only to find it had turned into a lava flow right there on their kitchen counter top. The problem, of course, was quickly corrected through a change in contractors, but I had some unhappy consumers that I needed to communicate with along with making sure the stores that carried my products had them off of the shelves until we got the new stuff on.
It's about communication, finding out how the problem happened in the first place, correcting it, working with unhappy consumers who are the victims of your bad product and keeping your lines open to everyone involved. Odwalla and its e-coli disaster is a great case study on positive recovery. As far as I can tell, Dagoba is doing what it needs to do to make things right. They work with some of the same distributors I work with, and things are going as good as they can in a situation like this.
Will I continue to buy Dagoba? Of course. They've tested all of their products and many of them are not on the recall list and are perfectly safe and delicious to eat. They've assured us of this. Some of you may think I'm just a blind supporter, but because I know the ethics and mindset of the owners of Oregon natural food companies, I trust that what they're telling us is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So, don't give up on Dagoba, folks. Let's give them a chance to make things right.
Never.
Posted by: Jack Bogdanski | April 05, 2006 at 01:30 AM