SLIME FLIES
Smoothie spat gets rough
● A Cape Town woman’s social media posts about a slimy discovery at the bottom of a strawberry smoothie have plunged her into the legal blender.
After making the find, Valerie Murray leapt to the conclusion that staff at Kauai had spat into her drink when she asked them to remake it.
The “mucus/sputum”, which Kauai says was actually poorly blended fruit, sparked a post on Kauai’s Facebook page and Hellopeter in which Murray said: “I immediately vomited in the bathroom.”
After the post went viral, it led to plunging revenue at Kauai’s Kloof Street store, polygraph tests, threats of violence and high court orders against Murray.
The drama began on April 9, when Murray bought a smoothie during her lunch break from a stock image company.
Her post related how she was initially given a “tasteless and runny” mango berry smoothie and asked staff to replace it.
Back at her office, she said, “as I got to the bottom it suddenly became very slimy. I spat it out and poured out the rest into a clean sink to check where the slimy consistency was coming from; only to find mucus/sputum at the bottom of the container!!!”
Murray wrote her post on April 17, and according to affidavits filed by Kauai it “wreaked havoc”, with many of those who commented vowing never to eat at Kauai again.
The store saw its revenue plunge by 30% and the company approached the High Court in Cape Town, where a judge issued an urgent interdict ordering Murray to remove her posts. The order was made permanent on May 22.
Murray recounted in her now-deleted posts that she took the slimy substance back to the store after her colleagues agreed it was mucus. Murray claimed the company was dismissive of her complaints, treated her like she was lying and never offered an apology or followed through with promised DNA testing.
“It’s important for everyone to know what they may potentially be ingesting when they order a smoothie from Kauai,” Murray wrote.
In its interdict application, Kauai said CCTV footage of the three employees who interacted with Murray “clearly shows that no staff members tampered with the product”.
The company even had one employee take a polygraph test and contacted a dozen medical laboratories to see if they could test the substance. They declined as the sample was too compromised.
Kauai’s head of marketing, Lorna Pretorius, told the Sunday Times the company took complaints seriously and offered to let Murray view the CCTV footage, but she cancelled three times.
Kauai’s lawyer, Janusz Luterek, said estimated losses due to the post could have reached R300 000 a month. “All [Kauai] wanted was an end to the horrendous posts, which were harming their brand and posing a threat to the named staff.”
The post also attracted “vulgar” comments that Luterek said were “more racist than anything I have seen in recent years”. One warned people to “never eat/drink anything prepared by blacks” and another suggested someone petrol-bomb the store.
Fritz Sonnenberg, Murray’s lawyer, said his client backed down because she did not get the sample back from Kauai, so she was unable to test it herself to prove her case.
He accused the company of treating Murray in a “high-handed and supercilious way”, adding: “By properly listening to her and treating her concerns with empathy and respect, the whole issue would have died a natural death.
“Instead, she was treated extremely poorly and, as a result, had no other option but to share her experience on social media.”
In a blog post before the interdict was granted, Kauai CEO Dean Kowarski said the investigation into Murray’s complaint took “a little longer” because the company wanted to gather the facts correctly.
“We have tried our best to resolve the matter with the customer,” Kowarski wrote. “It is regrettable that the customer has chosen to post statements which do not reflect all the facts.”