The popular food chain, Olive Garden has been experiencing a Public Relations crisis when servers gave a child an alcoholic drink for the second time within this year. The first time happened at an Olive Garden in Florida. A toddler was served sangria in her sippy cup. This second incident happened in Indianapolis, where a waitress accidentally served a 10-year old boy a rum and coke when his mother ordered a Frullato for him. Olive Garden’s responded with:
“We find this situation completely unacceptable and we are extremely upset that this occurred. We have a zero tolerance policy for any violation of our responsible alcohol service policy, and the employee who served the wrong drink has been terminated. We are thankful that the child is OK and we will continue to work with the family to resolve this issue.”
According to marketingprofs.com and from my Public Relations class at Virginia Commonwealth University, Olive Garden handled the situation correctly. The five steps to handling a PR Crisis is:
1. Come up with a solution for the problem
2. Own up to your fault
3. Apologize
4. Prevent it from happening again
5. Move on
Although this is the second time it happened, they made sure to apologize to the public and that is really all you can do and then try to prevent it from happening again.
Sources:
http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2538/five-steps-for-managing-a-pr-crisis
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