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Megan Neely
COM 253
Boyd
April 8, 2015
Case Study Assignment
Sysco Corporation, headquartered in Houston, is one of the largest food distributers in the
nation. While tending to 400,000 clients worldwide, Sysco has become a reputable organization
that distributes food and products to restaurants, hotels, educational institutions, and many other
foodservice businesses or companies. With this, the practices of distribution through the
corporation are to be safe and sanitary, all in insurance of quality food for consumers all over the
country.
What happens when these practices of food distribution violate public health code? What
happens when storage methods do not meet the required safety procedures for sanitary
consumption? Lastly, what happens to a large corporation when a branch of the company does
not demonstrate regulated values and practices? While there are 194 Sysco locations throughout
the United States, Canada, Bahamas and Ireland, it takes only one to create questionable
perspectives on the brand of the company as a whole.
Sysco San Francisco in California developed a problem that affected the entire
corporation. After maintaining unsafe and unsanitary storage practices for over ten years, NBC
Bay Area took the company under investigation, showing that they had been storing their food in
unrefrigerated sheds. Sysco was keeping raw meats, vegetables, milk and other perishables
stored for hours and hours in these sheds. Along with hiding 14 sheds in the Northern California
area from health inspectors, Sysco salespeople would transport the food in their personal cars,

opposed to qualified Sysco trucks. Sysco San Francisco was violating public health code, not
meeting the required safety procedures for sanitary consumption, and not demonstrating the
regulated values and practices of the corporation. Ultimately, causing unethical public relations
issues within the corporation, lasting negative and detrimental views on the company as a whole,
and easily avoided risk of consumer illness and death.
Since October, the situation has calmed, but not ceased, for the image created on Sysco
San Francisco will only fade with time. As a situation affects an entire corporation, actions must
be made quickly, with an expectation of a long duration of time before a solution is met. The
president of Sysco San Francisco is no longer with the company, along with many other
salespeople and employees involved. Besides those expected actions, the only other steps taken
towards a solution are new safeguard rules, which are still currently being developed. On the
basis of avoiding ethical dilemmas, the company jumped to create these rules in order to
immediately stop performance of practices that are not demonstrated through the values of the
corporation. 3,000 deaths and 48 million cases of illness are said to be linked to food borne
illness. This unethical practice was risking the lives of consumers while also going against
corporation values, calling for the company to stop prior practices right away. Although these
safeguards rules have good intentions, they have the potential to be too safeguarded, creating
other problems with the process of distribution. For example, these safeguard rules can be a bad
idea when it comes to transporting perishables in personal vehicles. Although the products
should be transported through qualified trucks by regulation, the new rule for no products
permitted in personal vehicles, not even napkins or dry products, creates a problem for any order
mistakes. Ordering or loading mistakes within the delivery cannot be recovered or fixed. If there
is no room in the truck for the dry products, then the restaurant will not get their dry products

because it is against policy to transport the products outside of a qualified truck. It is possible
that jumping to these safeguard rules as an immediate action of stopping the problem could be
adding more problems to the situation. There needs to be additional factors that go into these
rules. An alternative to this safeguard rule would be supplying two types of truck for
distributions. A dry product truck, and a normal refrigerated truck would solve the
transportation problem, allowing more room for the produce products and an accessible spot for
any dry product. This not only solves the problem of the new mandatory action for transporting
products in qualified trucks only, but it also puts emphasis on the importance of refrigeration.
Although that was just an example of how the attempted safeguard rules are being
implemented, the steps back to normality are very far. Sysco San Francisco is still dealing with
extreme decreases in sales, profit and clientele, making it difficult to maintain finances. After
paying $19.4 million dollars to settle the case, every fine, no matter how small was $1000,
making the total cost for penalties $15 million, alone. Other costs went to $3.3 million for public
health investigators, $1 million in donations to the California food banks, and $127,000 in legal
costs. A second course of action could be coming up with a useful, measureable objective with
corresponding tactics. This objective will collaborate with the efforts of external and internal
development; where as a situation such as this requires the company to manage clients like
prospects. They must redevelop and rebuild relations in order to meet an objective. For Sysco
San Francisco, increasing their sales back to where they were before the situation, plus 10%
more, would be a measureable, obtainable objective. Gaining back their old clients, maintaining
their current clients, and developing relations to get new clients is something this company
should be focusing on. With these clients, there should be opportunity to get their sales back on

track. Development-oriented tactics will change the image of Sysco San Francisco back to it
used to be, while this time this image will not consist of unrefrigerated foods.
A tactic that corresponds with the objective to increase the sales and client relations is the
simple strategy of sending out a national apology and explanation to all of Northern Californias
Sysco food vendors and services. In the terms of media relations, when the word gets out about
an open apology, the media, such as NBC, will pass on the positivity to clients. It is always
crucial to have the media on a good side, for what they say affects how the publics feel. The
clients deserve to understand what happened in the situation and have the freedom to choose
whether they want to continue relations or not. By being honest about the situation, explaining
what happened, being available for questions, and offering incentives of apology, clients will be
more willing to continue business. As other vendors see how Sysco clients are continuing their
business despite the situation, they will feel more desire to be involved with Sysco, also, bringing
in potential new clientele. This will eventually help to come closer to achieving the initial
objective.
To go along with the first tactic another course of action, which involves internal
development, is to implement additional employment positions within the department of
distribution and transportation. Sysco San Francisco made it evident that the process of food
being distributed to locations is not monitored thoroughly. A storage supervisor should be added
to all 194 locations with hopes of limiting the amount of error during the storage and
transportation process. This position would require detailed knowledge of corporation values and
practices that should be demonstrated by the salespeople, truck drivers, and warehouse workers.
This position must know the regulations for all sanitary product consumption, along with all the
expectations presented by the public health code and health inspectors. By this, this position will

monitor, maintain, then report to corporate Sysco headquarters the outcome of their practices,
leaving no room for hiding, unrefrigerated sheds. As this position is implemented, there should
also be a storage director position added into the corporation, overseeing all of the supervisors
within each company. These intentions are to prevent the process of transportation being
unmonitored, educating employees of the importance of safe and sanitary practices. Working on
the internal company development and improving external developmental relations, while having
conscious and effective media relations, provides for a solid first step in the right direction.