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Outback PR disaster - serves alcohol to four year old

Outback Stakehouse apparently has a bit of a PR crisis on its hands as the result of one of its restaurants serving a four-year old alcohol.

Now, to be fair, the alcohol was a sample and given to the parents. The parents however did not know there was alcohol in the samples and gave it to their kids.

Outback's response to the incident was:


We were serving samples of one of our specialty cocktails to adults waiting to be seated. Our server failed to inform the adults in the Kerwin family that the drink contained alcohol. A member of the family then gave the sample to two of their children.
Our server gave samples only to the adults in the Kerwin party and was not present when the adults gave the samples to the children. Regardless, we should have informed the adults that the samples contained alcohol.

On the one hand this is kind of a non-event in the sense that there was no intent to actually give the kids alcohol. 
On the other hand though, it does show how absent-minded businesses can be when it comes to alcohol, treating it as a mere liquid like water or soda with little concern over who is consuming what. 
If you are serving an alcohol-based drink that looks like a slushy in an environment where there are children, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that eventually, one way or another, a kid is going to end up drinking said slushy at some point. 

I think Outback's PR response was weak, but in the grand scheme of things a more forceful response probably wasn't called for. Given society's attitude towards alcohol most Outback patrons will probably chuckle at the fact the kids drank a vodka-slushy (given no one was ultimately hurt).  

If the Outback had been giving out cigarette samples however (I know, absurd, but play along), and the kids ended up smoking a cigarette, you can bet the PR storm would not go away and it could easily have done long-term, serious damage to their brand. 

It's interesting to note the different PR response strategy to aclohol versus say cigarettes. Because societal norms are heavily anti-smoking, people would be up-in-arms over an establishment letting a cigarette fall in to the hands of a four year. But because society is pro-aclohol, I'm betting most people view this incident as either comical or nothing to really get worked up over. 
A great example of how societal norms influence the degree of PR response to a crisis.

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