Daily Harvest’s Crumblegate is a Masterclass in How Not to Respond in a Crisis

Yesterday my boyfriend sent me a link to this tweet, which no amount of context would make seem like less of a disaster for Daily Harvest, a subscription startup that sends you frozen healthy meals, is backed by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, and is valued at more than $1 billion for some reason. “Betting right now that the Daily Harvest recall stems from a bad batch of mushrooms. The combination of GI distress, food poisoning symptoms, and acute hepatitis is exactly what happens when you eat a death cap — right down to the timeline people are reporting,” journalist Cass Balzer tweeted.

“Sad you’re not covering DTC startups?” he asked me.

I do kind of miss writing about DTC startups, talking to founders and investors, trying to understand their expensive and ever-rising customer acquisition costs (CAC) and the pivots to and away from and back to brick-and-mortar retail and why any of these consumer-facing brands were VC funded in the first place. But I have to admit Daily Harvest was never really on my radar—of course I got occasional Instagram ads and probably even a mailer for them, and a few weeks ago a mommy blogger I follow even posted some #spon about their new plant-based protein line, Crumbles (which: Who is naming these things? Could you possibly make plant-based food sound less appealing or fun to consume?).

As a consumer, I have been a sucker for many a DTC product (my suitcase is from Away; my purple matching…