Outraged consumers, a distributor on the defensive and investigations still underway: in Japan, a case of “collapsed cakes”, Christmas pastries delivered deformed, has taken social networks by storm, making it onto the front page of the local media.
Public apology
“We would like to deeply apologize for the deformation of our frozen Christmas cakes, which betrayed the expectations of many of our customers”: the buzz was such that the incriminated distributor – the Japanese department store chain Takashimaya – split Wednesday with a public and solemn mea culpa during a press conference broadcast on television by Kazuhisa Yokoyama, one of his senior officials.
Following numerous complaints from customers in recent days, many of whom have expressed their bad mood on social networks, with supporting photos, the group has also offered compensation. Even if the incriminated cream cakes, charged at 35 euros each, remain perfectly fit for consumption, only their appearance, flattened, collapsed or even crumbled, poses a problem. Takashimaya confirmed that more than 800 of about 2,900 frozen strawberry cakes he sold online and delivered around Christmas were damaged when they came out of the packaging.
“Full responsibility”
The group organized an in-depth investigation with its production and delivery partners to try to unravel the mystery of the pastry collapse. But without, immediately, being able to “identify a cause”, clarified Kazuhisa Yokoyama, specifying that temperature management was not in question. However, “as a seller, we are responsible for delivering our products to our customers, from production to distribution,” and “all responsibility lies with us,” insisted Takashimaya.
Consumers in Japan are particularly demanding about the quality and appearance of the products they buy, and expect a form of perfection when shopping in luxury department stores like Takashimaya. On the social network X, consumers expressed their “sadness”, or expressed doubts about the trust they could now have in the group.
But some “victims” also did their best to keep the Christmas spirit. One of them gave one of the collapsed cakes to her three-year-old son to redecorate. The photo of the pastry decorated with chocolate sprinkles, multicolored sugar and cardboard Christmas characters, had more than 16 million views on X on Wednesday.