(In-N-Out Burger and fries)

Quality food control is paramount to any quick service restaurant. McDonald’s announced that it stopped serving sliced tomatoes in restaurants in the United States over concerns about salmonella food poisoning linked to some uncooked varieties. When I was in college, I studied Environmental Economics and Policy and learned about farming. Food safety is hard to monitor and contamination can be cause by many reasons including improper food handling from humans to simply having “waste” in the field. McDonald’s purchases tomatoes from vendors and controling outbreaks can be challenging. First, McDonald’s operate in a franchise model so all franchisees will be notified of changes. Secondly, decisions can not be made as quickly in a large corporations since different department heads my sign off on a decision. Here are just some of the departments that McDonald’s probably must deal with.

Legal (compliance): What claims can be made to the public legally about the outbreak?
Public Relations: What is the message we want to send to the public so that they don’t fear the recall?
Human Resource: How fast can we hire consultant to evaluate how we can deal with the situation from past tomato recall from other restaurants?
Purchaser: How can we ensure in the future to purchase tomatoes that are safe for eating?
Logistics: How do we retract all the shipments of tomatoes that have been delivered to the restaurants?

On the other hand, privately owned In-N-Out can better handle this situation and respond more rapidly. They don’t need to report to shareholders and can make decisions more quickly with a smaller line of decision makers. As I have told many aspiring restaurant owners, serving great food is only 20% of the operation. Just to list a few others: Purchasing, legal, marketing, human resource, sales, logistics, merchandising, technology, accounting all come in play in an operation.