So this morning, I woke up, ran 3.1 miles, and then headed over to a local bakery on our way to take Kevin to work. I love this bakery and we buy any bread for our family that I do not make from there. I recently read an article on some nasty stuff in store-bought mass produced bread, but I digress.
I was super excited to get some yummy bread and to pick up one of my most favorite treats a peach smoothie from a Michigan creamery. I love these smoothies and this was to be my reward after a wonderful run with an improved time. I happily chatted with the people in the bakery, snatched up my bread and smoothie and headed out to the van so that we could get Kev to work.
As I began shaking up the smoothie I noticed that although the bottle was sealed shut there was a little liquid splashing off of it, I was mildly annoyed but figured it happens right. Well, after a few more moments of shaking and more drips flying off I decided I was ready to enjoy my treat. I started to open the smoothie and instantly it started spewing forth nasty smoothie everywhere, the bottle was like a little mini volcano. Kev was on a call from work and was trying to ignore the mini eruption occurring in the passenger's seat but when I frantically yelled for him to pull over he did. I could not believe it but the thing just kept flowing. He waited for me to open my door when I indicated that I could not because I was at this point covered in smoothie. He came around and opened the door (still on the phone, still acting all calm and put together) and just as he opened my door the smoothie popped. It exploded in a brilliant orange plume of good. Smoothie was everywhere; it was in my eyes, on the ceiling of the van, all over me, all over Kevin (it made cute little orange drops in his hair), there was smoothie on the car seats and the children in the back of the van, there was smoothie on the windows, on the doors, even on the outside of the car! It was brilliant! At that moment I heard Kevin say something like... "Uh, I am going to need to call you back, we have a smoothie emergency going on here." Hilarious! Kevin never loses his cool! Kev grabbed some towels that we were supposed to return to Church but thankfully hadn't yet and helped me wipe off my face, then we tried together to wipe down the van the best that we could. I was apologizing to him when he looked right at me and quietly quoted one of out favorite lines from Galaxy Quest... "And then it exploded." I couldn't help but laugh.
I immediately called the creamery that made the smoothie and initially this young girl on the phone told me there was a problem with the peach smoothies (no kidding) and offered me a $10 store credit at the creamery, I initially accepted this along with her apology and then about a second after I hung up I decided that was insane (our van was a disaster!) and called back. While I was waiting to talk with the young woman again, I decided to hand the phone to Kev. (one of us handles these situations well and it is not me--shocking I know), he spoke with them briefly, gave them his number and then hung up. He told me that the owner would call him back to discuss this as the people in the office at that time did not have the authority to make any other decisions regarding our situation.
A few hours later- after Kev had priced out getting the car professionally cleaned, he got a call back from the owner and she told him that apparently the problem was that they had used a new type of peach in an effort to purify their process and make thier products better, and the shelf life was not what they had anticipated... the smoothies had been delivered over the weekend to the local stores and they were in the process of recalling all of the peach smoothies from that run. She then offered to pay to have our car cleaned immediately and was extremely apologetic. I am very impressed with the way that this was handled and although at the time it was a HUGE mess, it was pretty hilarious too. My regret now is that we did not take a picture of the disaster before we cleaned everything up... it was very impressive.
I would also like to get on my soap box and point out that they were so great and cooperative (I believe) because they are a small, locally based company. I believe their concern for our situation was genuine and they wanted to do everything they could to make it right. I was very impressed with how wonderful they were and how willing they were to fix this situation for us. I love the products this creamery produces; their milk is fantastic, I love their smoothies, and their chocolate milk is my favorite! I also love knowing that the milk and dairy products I am consuming and feeding to my family are processed on a small scale by real people.
Moo-ville is a great company and I will definitely continue to purchase their products because they are wonderful and because the owners did so much to make this situation right.
We also will be laughing about this for ages.
