“I’m sorry for the people who got sick, they’re having a tough time and I feel awful about that”, he said in the interview.
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Public health officials in Boston say lab testing has confirmed the presence of norovirus at a Chipotle restaurant near the Boston College campus that sickened more than 120 students.
“When we reopen, the restaurant will be completely sanitized, and every single employee will have been tested and assured that they do not have norovirus”, Ells said of the Cleveland Circle location. An E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle restaurants in Washington state and OR has sickened almost two dozen people in the third outbreak of foodborne illness at the popular chain this year. And they said the restaurant failed to comply with policy when a sick employee worked a Thursday shift.
“We know from food safety research and from food production in this country that there are a lot of vulnerable areas where food contamination could occur”, she said. As the company enters damage-control mode, industry experts have urged it to be transparent in explaining to customers exactly what went wrong with Chipotle’s food preparation process, and what they’ll do to resolve the crisis. Norovirus is also pretty hard to destroy, so Chipotle will need to do the most to get it back up and running and gain people’s trust again.
Reuters reports that shares for the company jumped over 5% after Ells’ apology.
Last month, several eateries in the Northwest were closed after an E.coli outbreak caused several patrons to fall ill.
The fast-growing restaurant group has seen sales plummet since it shut 43 restaurants on the west coast in early November following an E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 50 people, with 20 hospitalized.
Some have used the outbreak to attack Chipotle’s use of fresh foods.
Chipotle became the darling of the fast-food world by attracting millennials, blue-collar workers and even whole families with its promise of high-quality, sustainably sourced Mexican-inspired cuisine.
The worry is that Chipotle’s high-standard brand positioning creates a greater risk when they stumble. He also promised that Chipotle would be a leader in food safety from here on out. “Many companies are starting to do it, but the reluctance is real and it’s problematic – and that’s getting in the way of food safety”.
“It’s time to give that culture a kick in the trousers and move into a higher realm of food safety”, Nelken said.
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A spokesman for Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. says the Boston College illnesses are likely isolated and not related to the E. coli cases that have turned up in the company’s restaurants in nine states.
