Coverage: Chipotle faces customers getting sick, again

Chipotle Mexican Grill saw its stock dip Tuesday after it temporarily closed a Sterling, Virginia, restaurant where several people reported getting sick.

Merrit Kennedy of NPR had the news:

Jim Marsden, the company’s executive director of food safety, told Yuki that the company closed the restaurant Monday “to conduct a complete sanitization.”

He said that the company is working with health officials to determine the cause of the illnesses. “The reported symptoms are consistent with norovirus. Norovirus does not come from our food supply, and it is safe to eat at Chipotle,” Marsden added.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “infected food workers are frequently the source of [restaurant] outbreaks [of norovirus], often by touching ready-to-eat foods, such as raw fruits and vegetables, with their bare hands before serving them.”

During its series of food safety issues two years ago, Chipotle was also linked to several other types of outbreaks at multiple locations across the country, including E. coli and salmonella.

Caitlin Dewey of The Washington Post reported that the company has been attempting to overcome the issues:

Since then, however, the chain has had to work hard to rehab its once-pristine reputation. It hired a number of food-safety experts to identify problems in its supply chain and launched an expensive ad campaign to draw customers back. As of the fourth quarter of 2016, same-store sales were improving — albeit not to the point where they were before the outbreaks happened.

During a December conference call with investors, Chief Marketing Officer Mark Crumpacker said that “the data, everything that we have, suggest there are not large numbers of customers staying away from Chipotle” because of food-safety problems.

Experts say they don’t believe consumers have reason to fear, either. Bill Marler, a lawyer who specializes in foodborne illness cases, said Chipotle had taken impressive steps to reverse its food-safety record — including hiring Marsden, formally a professor at Kansas State University, to head its cleanup efforts.

Marler cites the company’s quick response to the Sterling outbreak as evidence it has changed: The location immediately and voluntarily closed for a “full sanitation,” which Marler said many chains of similar size might not do for a small norovirus outbreak.

Leslie Patton of Bloomberg News reported that the market reacted negatively:

Wall Street’s judgment was swift — and brutal. Chipotle’s stock plunged nearly 8 percent on Tuesday, erasing its gain for the year. The episode, which involved a single location in Sterling, Virginia, recalled the string of foodborne illnesses that upended the chain two years ago, and underscored the fact that the company remains on probation with both customers and investors.

“Chipotle is under the microscope,” said Stephen Anderson, an analyst at Maxim Group. “Since this is Chipotle and it’s had its troubles in the past, it’s going to be under pressure.”

The burrito chain closed the location on the outskirts of Washington Monday after a “small number” of illnesses were reported, according to Jim Marsden, Chipotle’s executive director of food safety. The company is working with health authorities to determine the cause of the outbreak, he said. The restaurant was slated to reopen on Tuesday.