They also changed their press release based on those criticisms (See below). Since the beginning of the crisis, Shake Shack was contacted by a Eater reporter to comment on the criticisms on social media, and they responded quickly. (see how my information bubble narrowed my perception of this matter? This is why we need to be conscious of our bias and get information from a wide variety of media outlets.) So it turned out to be just a mild crisis for Shake Shack. Even NYT Food section, which often writes about food from a political perspective, didn’t say anything about this. But as I prepared for my presentation and did more research, I noticed that other than Eater, no other major food media reported on the topic. So when I first wrote about this on my LinkedIn, I thought this must be a huge crisis for Shake Shack. Eater is the first one to report on the controversy. I want to go into the food industry, so I’ve been closely following food news media like Eater. But when you’re talking about someone making bad Italian food, it’s just a bad interpretation because there’s no power dynamic here. When a dominant group (white chefs) took something from another group that has less power in the society (immigrant food) and benefiting from it, it is cultural appropriation. Merceron explained the difference between cultural appropriation vs. What counts as cultural appropriation? My classmate Lauren Spruiell asked an excellent question: I have a family member who came from Italy and complained about those so-called Italian pizzas in America, but no one would call that cultural appropriation why is this case called cultural appropriation? Prof.They need to think ahead of the audience, make a message map, but clearly, they didn’t do the work (and this launch was probably driven more by the marketing team). Merceron emphasized that before any product/campaign launch, the bottom line principle is asking: what might go wrong.
The fact that no one at Shake Shack said anything before the launch showed the lack of diversity in the company. Every BIPOC people in the food industry understand the importance of giving credit to other cultures' food. This controversy is exactly why you need diversity in your company, especially in the communication team. My classmate Shanty Khurana pointed out that the lunar new year is only a week away, which could be a much better opportunity to release the product.
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