My neighbor was preparing a spaghetti and meat sauce dinner for her family when she was interrupted by an alarming phone call. “This is Kroger calling to notify you that the beef you bought at our store may be tainted. Throw it away—it could cause severe illness!”

Of course she was very grateful that the nation’s largest traditional grocer had personally warned her about this week’s Nebraska Beef recall alert. She immediately discarded the partially cooked meat sauce—suddenly take-out sounded far more appealing!

I was also impressed with Kroger’s responsive notification. But I was also curious ... in this age of megastores and customer anonymity, how did Kroger know that she had purchased potentially tainted beef? Could they have tracked her down through their “Kroger Plus” customer loyalty program?

I did a little research and found out that’s exactly what happened.

After the 2007 “pet food recall” and other recent scares, a few months ago Kroger implemented a “register receipt notification system.” Now Kroger can call customers that purchase tainted products if they used their Kroger Plus loyalty card at the register. That’s because Kroger’s new system matches customers to contaminated products and sends an alert to anyone impacted by a recall.

It’s wonderful to see Kroger invest in this technology to protect their customers.

And to think that I’ve only been using my Kroger Plus card to receive discounts. I didn’t know it may also help me avoid life-threatening situations!