7 ms·

I do stop going to a restaurant once I or someone I know has gotten sick there. Look at Chipotle for instance, they are dealing with similar contamination rela

by glenda 10y ago

I do stop going to a restaurant once I or someone I know has gotten sick there. Look at Chipotle for instance, they are dealing with similar contamination related problems.

pstuart 10y ago
And they've taken active steps to prevent it happening again.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Look at the graph of CMG compared to MCD or DPZ to see how convinced the market is by this. The Chipotle contamination incident was devastating.
  - pstuart 10y ago
    I'm not suggesting that they weren't damaged by those incidents. 2016 data isn't in yet, but 2015 sales figures show them to be at least holding steady. My point was that the company ultimately aggressively addressed the problem head-on and very well may have saved the company. The public has no long term memory. Let's compare notes in 2018.
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago
  And yet, they are still struggling to fix their reputation and get customers back in the door. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/10/25/chipotle-whiffs-on-earnings-posting-weaker-than-expected-profit-amid-22-same-store-sales-decline/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...
  - toast0 10y ago
    I recently went to Chipotle for I think the first time since the changes[1], and while I'm sure the food is safer, having the chicken cooked offsite ruins the texture. I'm not sure I'll go back any time soon. [1] I didn't stop going because of the incident, I stopped going because I stopped doing what I was typically following with lunch at Chipotle.
ng12 10y ago
Chipotle's issues were sanitation related. Soylent's problem was people being allergic to an ingredient they didn't know they were allergic to.
- TillE 10y ago
  You (and Soylent) have absolutely no idea whether that's true. Which is the problem.
  - ng12 10y ago
    I believe Soylent has a pretty good idea. They know what changed in their formula, they know the difference between the products receiving complaints and the products not, and they have evidence from other companies (Honey Stinger) who had similar issues.
    - dzhiurgis 10y ago
      I wonder if they run any sort of A/B testing. Wouldn't harm if they sent few packages with one ingredient missing once in a while, then see what's the response.
      - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
        > I wonder if they run any sort of A/B testing. Wouldn't harm if they sent few packages with one ingredient missing once in a while, then see what's the response. The idea of using A/B testing for food safety testing is horrifying.
        dzhiurgis 10y ago
        Why? Do you actually think anything bad will happen if you ate for a month sans one micronutrient will permanently damage you?
  - baddox 10y ago
    How might they acquire that knowledge, other than through the process they seem to currently be executing?
jklinger410 10y ago
Soylent is marketed as an innovative beta-style product. Users should expect hiccups. This is not the same for a bulk of consumer restaurants.
- chc 10y ago
  I don't think most people even have a concept of a "beta-style food," so it seems pretty unreasonable to expect them to infer that from Soylent's marketing.
  - jklinger410 10y ago
    >We are constantly exploring the frontiers of food technology, with an aim to engineering foods which are more nutritious, efficient, and affordable than ever before. Right on their index
    - chc 10y ago
      Lots of companies say stuff like that. If what you mean to say is "We want to move fast and break things, and we consider this a beta product not ready for the wide market, so we're applying looser controls than most food companies, and this stuff might make you stick," then you need to say that. You can't reasonably expect people to intuit that from generic marketing talk† about exploring frontiers. † For example, milk brand FairLife boasts on its website about "changing the face of the dairy industry through cutting edge innovation." This is in reference to using 22-year-old dairies as their suppliers. Nobody understands it to mean that FairLife might make you sick.
      - jklinger410 10y ago
        The Mexican restaurant down the street doesn't advertise that they buy the cheapest chicken in town and therefore may give you food poisoning. They expect you to get that point based on the price. Advertisers are simply not going to do what many of these HN comments are demanding. This isn't a tech app, this isn't a linux distro. This is a general consumer facing product. They don't have an abnormal rate of sickness and they aren't selling people fish oil. They're using experimental products, which they are up-front about, and have experienced setbacks because of that. A food product that pleases this community would never make it to market or be profitable.
darawk 10y ago
Ya, and there's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't fault anyone for choosing not to use Soylent because of this. But there seems to be a weird sort of vitriol in the reaction here that doesn't seem like it happened to Chipotle. Perhaps because people see it as an example of the overconfident arrogance of 'tech people'. I'm not sure. But it seems deeply misguided to me. Yes, something has gone wrong. Yes, they are having trouble figuring out exactly what it was. But so did Chipotle. So do lots of other food companies when things like this happens. Would it be great if this didn't happen? Absolutely. But it's not unprecedented and it isn't at all clear to me that their processes and controls are substantially inferior to the industry standard. And secondly, they market themselves as a sort of radical new approach to food. They expressly cultivate that image of transformation and self-experimentation. Anyone willing to use a product like that should be more tolerant of bugs than average, IMO. If I got sick from Soylent I might stop drinking it, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't have made the thing in the first place.
- frugalmail 10y ago
  The whole point of bringing in the discipline associated with release notes and iterations is to make it a lot more transparent than existing food producers. The only problem is that they are not transparent enough with exact quantities and processes anymore. However, their process is supposed to decrease the number of issues not increase it.
  - darawk 10y ago
    I agree i'd like them to be completely transparent. However, they're certainly more transparent than your average packaged food company. And I don't think you can extrapolate from a single incident that their process has increased the number of issues. You need more data than that to make a claim of that sort.
vehementi 10y ago
Are you suggesting there exists a restaurant that nobody has ever gotten sick from eating at?
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Sure: new restaurants that don't have many customers yet.

by glenda 10y ago

I do stop going to a restaurant once I or someone I know has gotten sick there. Look at Chipotle for instance, they are dealing with similar contamination related problems.

pstuart 10y ago

And they've taken active steps to prevent it happening again.

tptacek 10y ago
Look at the graph of CMG compared to MCD or DPZ to see how convinced the market is by this. The Chipotle contamination incident was devastating.
- pstuart 10y ago
  I'm not suggesting that they weren't damaged by those incidents. 2016 data isn't in yet, but 2015 sales figures show them to be at least holding steady. My point was that the company ultimately aggressively addressed the problem head-on and very well may have saved the company. The public has no long term memory. Let's compare notes in 2018.
dforrestwilson1 10y ago
And yet, they are still struggling to fix their reputation and get customers back in the door. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/10/25/chipotle-whiffs-on-earnings-posting-weaker-than-expected-profit-amid-22-same-store-sales-decline/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...
- toast0 10y ago
  I recently went to Chipotle for I think the first time since the changes[1], and while I'm sure the food is safer, having the chicken cooked offsite ruins the texture. I'm not sure I'll go back any time soon. [1] I didn't stop going because of the incident, I stopped going because I stopped doing what I was typically following with lunch at Chipotle.

ng12 10y ago

Chipotle's issues were sanitation related. Soylent's problem was people being allergic to an ingredient they didn't know they were allergic to.

TillE 10y ago
You (and Soylent) have absolutely no idea whether that's true. Which is the problem.
- ng12 10y ago
  I believe Soylent has a pretty good idea. They know what changed in their formula, they know the difference between the products receiving complaints and the products not, and they have evidence from other companies (Honey Stinger) who had similar issues.
  - dzhiurgis 10y ago
    I wonder if they run any sort of A/B testing. Wouldn't harm if they sent few packages with one ingredient missing once in a while, then see what's the response.
    - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
      > I wonder if they run any sort of A/B testing. Wouldn't harm if they sent few packages with one ingredient missing once in a while, then see what's the response. The idea of using A/B testing for food safety testing is horrifying.
      - dzhiurgis 10y ago
        Why? Do you actually think anything bad will happen if you ate for a month sans one micronutrient will permanently damage you?
- baddox 10y ago
  How might they acquire that knowledge, other than through the process they seem to currently be executing?

jklinger410 10y ago

Soylent is marketed as an innovative beta-style product. Users should expect hiccups. This is not the same for a bulk of consumer restaurants.

chc 10y ago
I don't think most people even have a concept of a "beta-style food," so it seems pretty unreasonable to expect them to infer that from Soylent's marketing.
- jklinger410 10y ago
  >We are constantly exploring the frontiers of food technology, with an aim to engineering foods which are more nutritious, efficient, and affordable than ever before. Right on their index
  - chc 10y ago
    Lots of companies say stuff like that. If what you mean to say is "We want to move fast and break things, and we consider this a beta product not ready for the wide market, so we're applying looser controls than most food companies, and this stuff might make you stick," then you need to say that. You can't reasonably expect people to intuit that from generic marketing talk† about exploring frontiers. † For example, milk brand FairLife boasts on its website about "changing the face of the dairy industry through cutting edge innovation." This is in reference to using 22-year-old dairies as their suppliers. Nobody understands it to mean that FairLife might make you sick.
    - jklinger410 10y ago
      The Mexican restaurant down the street doesn't advertise that they buy the cheapest chicken in town and therefore may give you food poisoning. They expect you to get that point based on the price. Advertisers are simply not going to do what many of these HN comments are demanding. This isn't a tech app, this isn't a linux distro. This is a general consumer facing product. They don't have an abnormal rate of sickness and they aren't selling people fish oil. They're using experimental products, which they are up-front about, and have experienced setbacks because of that. A food product that pleases this community would never make it to market or be profitable.

darawk 10y ago

Ya, and there's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't fault anyone for choosing not to use Soylent because of this. But there seems to be a weird sort of vitriol in the reaction here that doesn't seem like it happened to Chipotle. Perhaps because people see it as an example of the overconfident arrogance of 'tech people'. I'm not sure. But it seems deeply misguided to me. Yes, something has gone wrong. Yes, they are having trouble figuring out exactly what it was. But so did Chipotle. So do lots of other food companies when things like this happens. Would it be great if this didn't happen? Absolutely. But it's not unprecedented and it isn't at all clear to me that their processes and controls are substantially inferior to the industry standard. And secondly, they market themselves as a sort of radical new approach to food. They expressly cultivate that image of transformation and self-experimentation. Anyone willing to use a product like that should be more tolerant of bugs than average, IMO. If I got sick from Soylent I might stop drinking it, but I wouldn't say they shouldn't have made the thing in the first place.

frugalmail 10y ago
The whole point of bringing in the discipline associated with release notes and iterations is to make it a lot more transparent than existing food producers. The only problem is that they are not transparent enough with exact quantities and processes anymore. However, their process is supposed to decrease the number of issues not increase it.
- darawk 10y ago
  I agree i'd like them to be completely transparent. However, they're certainly more transparent than your average packaged food company. And I don't think you can extrapolate from a single incident that their process has increased the number of issues. You need more data than that to make a claim of that sort.

vehementi 10y ago

Are you suggesting there exists a restaurant that nobody has ever gotten sick from eating at?

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Sure: new restaurants that don't have many customers yet.