Late start: Chipotle seeks resuscitation after food-borne illnesses
Business
Late start: Chipotle seeks resuscitation after food-borne illnesses
Chipotle restaurants across the U.S. are opening later than usual Monday so workers can attend a meeting about the chain’s recent food-safety scares. The company says stores will open at 3 p.m. in their local time zones, instead of the usual 11 a.m. Chipotle expects about 50,000 employees to go to more than 400 locations to review a rapid overhaul of practices that it hopes will eliminate outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and norovirus. The meeting comes after Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. saw its sales slammed by the food scares. In January, sales plunged 36 percent at stores open at least 13 months.
We just want to know about the bad apples so we can avoid them.
Darin Detwiler, senior policy coordinator for STOP Foodborne Illness
In recent months, Chipotle has lost customers, sales and profits after outbreaks of foodborne illnesses that sickened more than 500 people from Seattle to Boston. Food safety advocates say more information would help. The development of a national database of safety scores broken out by restaurant chain could motivate restaurants to improve and maintain high standards.
