Cooking Up A Storm

The recent ‘fake cheese’ video is among a spate of incidents that threatens to derail the QSR industry that was just about getting its act together.

- Rajiv Singh

It was the second Monday of April. Pratik Pota, the chief executive officer of Jubilant FoodWorks, distinctly remembers the moment when he was struck with “absolute disbelief”: A few minutes after a hectic meeting that ended around noon.

“It was rubbish,” recalls Pota, alluding to the Domino’s ‘fake cheese’ video that went viral on social media last month. The video alleged that Domino’s used fake cheese in its pizzas, and some of its products allegedly contained large amounts of fat and saturated fat. It was “so factually wrong”, Pota claims, that “we thought that it would find no believers”.

Unfortunately for Pota, and Jubilant FoodWorks—the master franchisee of American pizza chain Domino’s in India—the video found ample takers. It spread like wildfire. The potential of the brand getting singed was so high that Jubilant immediately switched to a damage-control mode: An urgent media statement refuted all allegations of using fake cheese, a speedy internal investigation found the video fake, the chef who was exposing the alleged misdeeds of Domino’s was found to be an impersonator, and an FIR was filed against him at the Noida police station.

“Every single thing that was being said in the video was wrong,” claims Pota. Though the allegations turned out to be false, the damage it did in terms of swaying the sentiments of consumers was immense.

Domino’s, though, was not alone in finding itself in a soup. Last month, the Income Tax (I-T) department reportedly conducted searches on nearly 20 premises of Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt Ltd (HRPL), one of the master franchisees of McDonald’s that runs its outlets in West and South India.