I know all about the ecoli story. Deer droppings found their way into the drinks. The company was remarkable in how it tried to make things right. They seemed to truly care, but you'd know better since you were there.
the outbreak was caused by a mis-shipment of apples from a supplier. The company always tried to purchase the grade just below supermarket level... typically smaller or off color but picked off trees not off the ground. Though records showed they'd paid for that level, they received a lower grade load that included fallen fruit from the ground where it had come in contact with animal feces. The Odwalla employees at the plant should have caught this mix up inspecting the load but didn't. Even so, the levels of e coli in a properly refrigerated juice from that contaminated batch were so low it probably wouldn't have caused a healthy adult any noticeable symptom. The problems that were experienced happened when the product was allowed to significantly warm up. Over half of the problems were experienced at various Starbucks which kept the juices on the counter in display buckets with ice in them (they didn't want our Odwalla labeled coolers in their stores taking attention away from their brand). Their rotating staffs often forgot to check/refill the ice resulting in high spoil rates for the juices and in this particular case allowing for the bacteria level to grow to dangerous levels.
At the time they didn't pasteurize their juices because it was better both nutritionally and for taste. After words they developed a "flash pasteurization" process of rapidly heating then cooling the juice providing a higher level of protection against this sort of thing for the consumer. A side benefit for the company was that this process significantly improved the shelf life of the product, but unfortunately it also kills off a bit of the nutritional value and curbs some of the fresh juice taste.
The day the news hit I drove a truck around SF going to various accounts buying back all of our product. I must have been flipped off like 10 times that day by random drivers and foot traffic... one guy told me I was a "baby killer" as he gave me the bird. Our story was front page above the fold news and it was open hate season on us. A local SF Chronicle news crew pulled over when they saw me and started peppering me with questions and snapping pix while I worked. I lied/played dumb saying I'd just started working there.
"I don't know nuthin... just doing what I'm told buyin back these juices". As they were wrapping it up/packing up their gear, I asked them what they knew about the story since I'm so out of the loop. They said that it was a real dry news period nationally with only the suspense of whether the Democrats would renominate Bill Clinton to challenge us for importance... they said to look for it to be rewritten 8 ways to Sunday until the next story happens. The following days brought an unbelievable amount of pot stirring hysteria. Pertinent info (like that only infants and people with compromised immune systems were at risk) was buried while
headlines and misinformation led. I've been jaded towards the "news" since
The company spent millions on the recall and lost all sorts of clients at least temporarily. Many employees lost their jobs because of the drop in demand but Corporate's doing the right thing actions saved the company. My big contribution was getting a foot in the door with a single Marriot account at USF about two months later in what looked like a lost cause. I worked with the managers of the food outlets there who were dealing with many complaints from kids to start petitions to bring us back... we gathered 600+ sigs from students. This eventually led to us recovering another 35 (or so) Marriot accounts representing tens of millions in annual sales.
anyhoo... It's a great product that I still drink even though its not as good as it once was. here's Wiki on it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odwalla
STOMP
