SOUTHFIELD, Mich. -- Officials at Hygrade Food Products Corp., who dropped $1 million worth of business after 14 people falsely reported finding razor blades, pins and nails in Ball Park franks, said Sunday business has picked up.
'I think some of the positive visibility we got out of these incidents had some positive effect on business today,' said Charles Ledgerwood, Hygrade's vice-president of operations.
'We've probably got a better organization here ... as a result of this problem than we ever had before,' he added, noting the close cooperation of workers and management helped the firm through the crisis.
Four months ago, Hygrade hot dogs were pulled off the market in five states when the false reports were lodged.
Hygrade officials say they do not know now if it is sympathy for them as a hoax victim or just plain fondness for their product, but sales of Ball Park franks are up across the country and have increased 10 percent in the Detroit area over the same period last year.
Four days after the first tampering report, and after hot dog production had been shut down and more than 1 million pounds of hot dogs had been run through metal detectors, two complainants admitted they had lied about finding sharp objects in their franks.
Less than a week later, the Ball Park Franks were back on store shelves. Nationally, Ball Park are the No. 2 selling franks behind Oscar Mayer.
Ledgerwood said employee loyalty and fair media treatment helped the firm survive the false tampering reports.
'We had a product people had been trusting for years,' he said. 'We had fair and in some cases above-fair treatment from the news media. All the news media worked very hard (to report) we had been victimized.'
