A recall statement, tonight.
It is 4:40 on a Thursday. A lab result came back on one batch, the product has to come off the shelf, and your largest retailer already knows. A reporter will know by morning. You have a lawyer on the phone, no statement, and about two hours.
You have two hours and nothing written. The usual answer is to write something and hope. This is what it looks like to test it first.
The result comes back at 4:40.
A mid-sized Ontario food company — around 120 people, one plant, chilled dips and spreads in grocery stores across three provinces. A routine test on a batch that ran three weeks ago comes back positive. Roughly 9,000 tubs left the building. The quality manager has already called the buyer at the company’s largest grocery customer, because the supply contract says she must, and that chain is clearing the product overnight. The federal inspection agency has been notified, because the law says so. A reporter who covers food safety reads those notices the moment they post.
The founder is in the car. There is no crisis firm on retainer — a company this size rarely has one — and the tabletop exercise the insurer paid for last spring rehearsed a fire at the plant, not this. The lawyer wants three sentences and nothing more. Two people on the line are already being asked by friends whether it is true. Whatever goes on the website tonight is the first thing every customer, the buyer, and the reporter will read, and it cannot be taken back.
What testing a recall statement usually costs.
A firm you don’t have, and an exercise for a different night.
A well-prepared company keeps a crisis firm on retainer and runs a tabletop exercise once a year. Most companies this size have neither — and the exercise, if there was one, scripted a scenario chosen months earlier by consultants. So the statement is drafted at the kitchen table, read down the phone to the lawyer, trimmed, and posted.
Two hours is enough to test it.
Describe what happened in a few sentences. PRISM looks up the bodies a recall like this actually pulls in — the federal food inspection agency, the provincial public health unit — and builds the audience: the customers who bought the batch, the retail buyer, the reporter, the regulator, your own staff. It drafts two or three candidate statements from only the facts you gave it, puts each in front of that audience, and revises on what the test found.
Published industry estimates. The tabletop range is PreparedEx’s own costing; a second US firm, Bryghtpath, publishes facilitated exercises from US$7,500 for a one-day and quotes 4–6 weeks of design. Retainer figures are from an agency’s published pricing guide. Every figure and its source is on Compare.
Five sentences in. A statement you can send.
A walkthrough of this scenario, written to show the shape of the exchange — the sections and the kind of answer a Crisis briefing gives.
A lab result at 4:40, and nothing written
A batch of our chilled dip tested positive and has to come off shelves. About 9,000 tubs shipped to grocery stores in three provinces between the 8th and the 14th. Our largest retailer knows and is clearing it overnight; the inspection agency has been notified. We have had no illness reports. We have no statement and we need one tonight.
A Crisis Decision Report — with the statement drafted, tested and revised
Publish tonight, and lead with the batch codes. The audience that matters in the first twelve hours is the person standing in their kitchen holding the tub, not the trade press. Open with the batch codes and best-before dates, then the symptom to watch for and how long it can take to appear, then what to do with the product and how the refund works. Say what you know, and name what you do not know yet, including how many units are still in homes. Name the inspection agency you notified, and give a direct line with a person’s name on it. Cut the sentence beginning “we take food safety seriously” — every segment read it as the company talking about itself while they were trying to work out whether their child will be ill.
- The Call
- Operating Reality
- Who’s Reacting
- What’s Spreading
- Recommended Response
- What to Avoid
- Evidence & Confidence
- Your Original Input
What’s in the briefing that wasn’t in the room.
Written for the person who has to decide in the next hour — the call first, then everything it rests on.
- Which statement to sendTwo or three candidates, drafted from your facts and tested. You get the one that held up, the change that made the difference, and why the others did not.
- The order the facts have to come inBatch codes and dates first, symptom and timing second, what to do with the tub third. Where a draft buries them, the report says so and moves them.
- Where the retailer breaks from youThe phrasing the buyer reads as making the store the problem — quoted — before it is read in the morning.
- What the reporter will ask by 8 a.m.The questions your statement invites and does not answer: how many units, since when, what about the other lines. And what leaving each one open costs you.
- What not to sayThe lines that read as blame-shifting, minimizing, or written by counsel. Named, so nobody puts them back at midnight.
- How much to trust itCitations for every finding, the reviewers’ disagreements printed rather than averaged, the events that would reverse the call, and a confidence reading that can only be lowered.
Faster and cheaper. And different in kind.
Quality
An exercise puts twenty of your own colleagues in a room. A briefing puts the statement in front of a simulated audience built from the people who will actually receive it, has a named panel of AI reviewers argue over the reactions, attacks its own conclusion, and shows the citations underneath. More perspectives, adversarial review, and evidence you can check line by line.
Speed
Four to six weeks to design a tabletop exercise. About a minute for a briefing, after a short guided conversation. On the night the result comes back, that is the only comparison that counts.
Cost
One credit, one full briefing — against US$5,000–15,000 a month on retainer or US$25,000–40,000 for a single facilitated exercise. No contract, and nothing to arrange before the night you need it.
Figures as above: PreparedEx (tabletop costing), Bryghtpath (design lead time), an agency pricing guide (retainers). Sources on Compare.
The loop closes.
Every finding names the real-world event that would reverse it. A few days later those come back as plain questions — did the buyer call?, did a second batch test positive? — and your answers build a record of how the briefing compared with what actually happened.
When the situation moves, run it again. The new report opens with Since your prior run: what got resolved, what is new, and how confidence moved and why. And one door stays open the whole time — Rewrite my statement & re-test applies the report’s own refinements to your statement and runs it through again.
Read it in the app, publish it to your own branded portal, download the PDF, share it by secure link, or listen to the audio briefing on the drive back to the plant.
Four steps. Minutes, not weeks.
Tell it what's going on
A few sentences in your own words, a draft if you have one, a link if the conversation is already out there. A short guided conversation fills in the rest — mostly by clicking.
PRISM builds your audience
A simulated population built from your stakeholders — customers, employees, residents, journalists, regulators — including the real public bodies your situation pulls in.
They react. Then it's argued.
The audience reacts to the actual material. A named panel of AI reviewers argues about what the reactions mean, and a reviewer whose job is to break the draft attacks the conclusion.
You get the Decision Report
The call, the evidence, the disagreements, what would change the call, and an honest confidence reading. Read it, share it from your own portal, download it, or listen to it.
Live from the catalog — what the app charges today.
Every name, description and price below is read from the same catalog the app bills from, at the moment you load this page. Change a product in the back office and this page changes with it.