General Mills' "Shrimp Shells Snafu"

I am not a fan of General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It’s just way too much sugar in the morning, but a lot of people are. In particular, a comedian in California touts that he only eats this brand of cereal.

He wound up getting a special treat in his box. What appeared to be some shrimp shells found their way into his specially-marked box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  He didn't pay for this and sent a complaint to General Mills.

This event is bad enough on multiple fronts, but what made it worse was General Mills’ response. The company tried to explain those weren’t shrimp shells but, in fact, some crystallized cinnamon and sugar that weren't baked right in the cooking process.

Beg your pardon, but those photos look like shrimp shells.

What followed was a “back and forth” between General Mills and this customer, who, by the way, has a decent social media following. The event quickly got out of hand.

If I was General Mills, I would have approached this crisis in a far different way. Any time a customer complains about the quality of a product, you have to assume their next move will be to blast the news all over social media. I would have certainly apologized to this person and said “We need to have the box and we're going to take you seriously. We're not exactly sure how that could have happened if it did, and we’ll see if we can't come up with a definitive answer.”

That's all they had to say at the beginning until they could verify what they were looking at and then figure out how to fix it. I'm sure General Mills is just as perplexed as the rest of us, but what made it even worse was their quick discard of the customer complaint.

That’s the wrong answer, and it ultimately made this matter worse.

For all of you that were Cinnamon Toast Crunch fans, I'm curious if you still are.