Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

This is a complex one, and it is hard to establish the actual facts with any certainty. 

Ken Wieczerza claims he fuond a bandage baked into his pizza. A word here on terminology: the 'bandage' was a small adhesive bandage of the type normally called a sticking plater in the UK. It was speckled with blood. This is, let's face it, not something you want to find in your food.

The story was picked up in the msm and went viral in social media. Pizza Hut promised to investigate. The company hit the problem that is so common in any brandjacking situation – the story was developing fast in social media, yet any genuine and thorough investigation was sure to take time. That said, Wieczera says he only went to the media because Pizza Hut was being so slow in responding to his initial complaint.

But this is where it gets weird. Pizza Hut is now saying that the dough type does not match their pizzas and the bandage is not the type they use. (It is one of the bright blue ones, typically used in the food preparation industry, specifically to avoid this problem, but Wieczera works in the fast food industry, so he would know that). The clear implication from Pizza Hut is that the claim is a hoax from someone seeking to cash in. Except that Wieczera says he never sent them the pizza slice, and still has it in his freezer. So what exactly did Pizza Hut test to come to the conclusion that the slice wasn't one of theirs?