Taco Bell or Taco Hell?Â
‘Yum! Brands’ has a code red! A single customer just set off a mass recall of over two million pounds of beef. How? By finding a suspicious metal shaving in his taco. Investors fear history may be repeating itself!
For context, Taco Bell is part of a small group chain restaurants owned by Yum! Brands. It’s a fast-food faction that also includes KFC, Pizza Hut, and Yum! China, which, as its name suggests, tries to hook the Chinese on pizza and fried chicken. The group has plodded along for years as a defensive play for investors.
However, it’s not been an entirely smooth ride. In 2006, Taco Bell’s spinach was found liable for an E. Coli outbreak, which plagued investors’ returns for almost a year. And who remembers when Kentucky Fried Chicken ran out of chicken?
So, when reports filtered through of a customer eating a metal filing-seasoned taco, it was all hands on deck to prevent yet another PR disaster. 2.7 million tons of seasoned meat has been recalled and chucked away, with Yum! now hoping only to lose that one customer, not all 2 billion that make a border run for Taco B every year. It looks like the group may have gotten away with it this time!