Why Some Food Brands Survive Crises and Others Get Eaten Alive

A Q&A with Brooke Hovey, CrisisCommand's Founder in Residence

This summer, while exploring London and the English countryside with her husband, Jim, and their one-year-old daughter, Brooke Hovey, CrisisCommand's Founder in Residence, spent downtime navigating a different kind of landscape: the risk terrain of America's food-service industry.

Her project? Analyze some of the most high-profile crises in the sector — from data breaches and foodborne illness to unionization efforts, political backlash, and executive misconduct — and distill the insights into an AI knowledge base designed to help brands respond faster, think clearer, and lead better under pressure.

I sat down with her to unpack what she found.

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Q: You looked at dozens of food-service crises. What pattern surprised you most?

Brooke: It surprised me how often the biggest breakdowns weren't external — they were internal alignment failures. The data breach might be technical, or the protest might be localized, but the reputational damage usually comes from delay, finger-pointing, or vague communication.

Legal wants caution, Comms wants clarity, Ops worries about franchisee confusion — and by the time alignment happens, the story has already run away.

Across more than 50 major cases, over half cited internal coordination failures as a contributing factor to escalation. In a third, no one even knew who owned the first response. That's not inevitable. It's fixable.

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Q: Which risks do leadership teams still underestimate?

Brooke: Labor relations, absolutely. Executives still see union activity or walkouts as niche risks, but the public sees them as tests of character.

Food safety is another. Operationally, it's well understood, but from a communications standpoint, it's often bungled. The 24- to 48-hour lag between discovery and disclosure can be fatal to trust.

And social or political flashpoints — especially those related to DEI — can ignite overnight. One donation, one policy tweak, and you're suddenly in a national firestorm. If you haven't clarified your values in advance, you'll end up improvising them live.

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Q: What defines a best-in-class response?

Brooke: The best brands don't get it perfect, but they move fast and visibly. They show that leadership is engaged, that values drive decisions, and that internal teams are aligned.

Chipotle's response to its food-safety crisis is a textbook case. They leaned into transparency and communicated relentlessly — not just about fixing the problem, but about restoring trust. That consistency limited the damage and ultimately strengthened the brand.

McDonald's 2019 CEO exit was another. The company acted quickly and framed the decision around values and accountability. The follow-through mattered — stakeholders were briefed, messaging was consistent, and ambiguity was avoided. It is noteworthy how quickly and resolutely McDonald's took action. The message was: we don't tolerate violations, even at the highest levels. That's what protected the brand.

On the other hand, brands that delay or handle crises as purely operational miss the point: in a public test of trust, silence reads as evasion.

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Q: What should food-service CEOs and CMOs be thinking about right now?

Brooke: Every brand should have a pressure map — a clear view of where it's most exposed:

• Where is data privacy weakest?
• Where is employee sentiment deteriorating?
• Which cultural or political issues could flare up?

Then ask: If something happens tomorrow, who makes the first call? Who approves the message? Who explains it to the store manager in Iowa?

Those answers are usually fuzzy until the crisis hits. The brands that survive have already rehearsed them.

And leadership visibility is huge. In almost 40% of the cases we reviewed, early executive communication was the single biggest factor in preserving trust. When leaders show up quickly and clearly, people take notice.

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Q: You've helped build CrisisCommand FOOD. How does it help?

Brooke: What's most powerful is that it doesn't just generate messaging — it helps leadership think through trade-offs.

You can simulate a protest, a recall, or a data breach and immediately see where alignment breaks: which departments clash, which stakeholders react, and which narratives contradict one another. It's a rehearsal space for tough decisions — a way to strengthen judgment before the real test.

That's what attracted me to this work. After years of helping clients navigate real-world crises, I wanted to help build something that could improve judgment itself — not just document it after the fact.

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Q: One last takeaway for brand leaders?

Brooke: Don't confuse legal risk with reputational risk. You can follow every legal protocol and still lose public trust.

What people want to see is your values in action — empathy, clarity, conviction. If you do that well, they'll forgive mistakes. If you don't, even a small error can define your brand for years.

And remember: trust is the real currency. In our dataset, 62% of expert commentary identified trust — not cost or legality — as the key factor determining how crises ended.

So here's the question every food brand should be asking:

If your next crisis breaks tomorrow, will your values be visible — or just written down?

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Paul Walker is co-founder of CrisisCommand. Connect with him on LinkedIn or contact us to learn more.