I don't know if you guys remember this but when I had heard about it, it completely grossed me out. Let me take you back....
March 22, 2005, a woman from Las Vegas finds a HUMAN FINGER in her chili while eating at a San Jose, Calif. Wendy's restaurant. Anna Ayala, a woman from Las Vegas Nev., "found" this surprise ingredient. She reportedly bit into her chili, gnawed on something chewy, and immediately spit it out.
Wendy's immediately got on it. They checked all their employees and made sure that all fingers were intact. They tracked all of their ingredients back to the suppliers to check for finger-losing accidents and none were found. They even gave their employees polygraph tests and they all came up negative.
News spread of this incident pretty quick. As you can imagine, people were pretty disgusted by this news. Sales dropped in Northern Californian Wendy's, employees were laid off, and work hours were cut. Even where I was in North Dakota, I had heard about it and decided I wouldn't eat at Wendy's for a while.
While all of this was happening, the accused Wendy's was reopened after they were sure their chili was made with fresh ingredients. The spokespeople for Wendy's kept reassuring the public that they were searching for the source of this finger and that their food was clean. They even offered a $50, 000 reward to anyone providing veritable information leading to identification of the person who lost their finger. They even bumped it up to $100,000 when no leads were being found.
Wendy's offered a free frosty day at the restaraunt where the incident happened and they had people lined up all the way out of the door. They then proceeded to do a national free frosty day. I think this was a good idea for them to get some people back into their restaurant. Everyone loves free stuff.
It turns out, it was all a scam (thank gosh, right). Ayala has been charged of attempted grand larceny and has been sentenced to nine years in prison. The finger turned out to be owned by an associate of Ayala's husband. The whole scam cost Wendy's more than $2.5 million in lost revenue.
It is good for Wendy's taht this hoax was figured out. They took a hard hit in business, who knows where they would be today. I thought they did an okay job in crisis public relations, but, they probably could have done better. All I know is, if that didn't turn out to be a hoax, I don't think there is any amount of PR that could make me go back to Wendy's.
