Chandarana Supermarket evokes more fury with an apology for racist ‘Whites-bait’ email
By HILARY KIMUYUChandarana Foodplus Supermarket has been forced to apologise after an email they circulated to their managers on how to attract Caucasian customers went viral.
The email sent by Mrs Rima Patel, who is a Marketing Specialist at the store, advised all managers to target white shoppers with gift vouchers.
“We are delighted to inform you that our supermarket chain, would like to give you free vouchers to winner/raffles/best performer/runners up candidate in upcoming events. As we are now focusing on white people to attract our supermarkets,” part of the email read.
Felogene Anumo, who shared the email on social media, wondered what kind of marketing that was.
.@ChandaranaSuper what kind of BS marketing is this? “You are now focusing on white people to attract your supermarkets” The audacity! #ChandaranasSoRacist pic.twitter.com/ysKHgXaRnK
— Felogene Anumo (@felogene) July 27, 2018
WORDING OF EMAIL
The supermarket has since issued an apology while at the same time blaming the wording of the email on a new staff who was not well conversant with English.
“Chandarana Foodplus would like to sincerely apologise for the unfortunate and insensitive narrative written on email by one of our very new and recent hires in the marketing department,” the statement read in part.
The supermarket owned up that the language howler by the said new staff doesn’t make the incident excusable adding that the error came as a big embarrassment to them.
Please accept our sincere apology for a recent email sent to you pic.twitter.com/NPch9dboM9
— Chandarana Foodplus (@ChandaranaSuper) July 28, 2018
BAD SITUATION
However, the move seems to have further infuriated some online users who felt the apology only served to worsen an already bad situation.
“At this rate your right to speak or write in English maybe withdrawn. You cannot be allowed to drag the Queen’s language in mud. From Racism to messing up the English Language,” wrote one Mohamed Hersi.
While Samia Omar said, “ I was first mad, then read the replies from Chandarana Foodplus, The grammar wah!! Now I think this email might just have been written by the same person managing their account and s/he just doesn’t know English. What does “white people to attract our supermarket” mean???”