Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., said the company’s local produce suppliers may not all be able to meet the new standards.
Advertisement
Chipotle (CMG – Get Report) just can’t seem to shake its illness.
Although the majority of the outbreak has originated in OR and Washington, additional cases have been reported in Ohio, Minnesota, New York and California.
This is a developing story.
The restaurant chain said that it is continuing to work with federal, state and local health officials to investigate the outbreak.
The company is now scrambling to tighten up its procedures for guaranteeing the safety of its food as investigators continue to dig into what caused the outbreak.
Shiga toxin-producing E. coli bacteria is the type most commonly heard about in association with foodborne outbreaks.
That’s down from last year’s $3.84 per share.
“Sales trends during the quarter so far have been extremely volatile”, the company said in the filing.
Of the three most recent illnesses reported in November, only one ill person reported eating at Chipotle Mexican Grill in the week before their illness began, the CDC says. Earnings are also expected to fall to between $2.45 and $2.85 per share for the quarter.
“Seven more ill people have been reported from California (1), IL (1), Maryland (1), OH (2), Pennsylvania (1), and Washington (1)…two of these illnesses started in October, five started in November”, said the CDC on Friday in a statement.
Mansour Samadpour, CEO of IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group, which was hired by Chipotle as an outside food safety consultant, said in a press release, “this program eliminates or mitigates risk to a level near zero and will establish Chipotle as the industry leader in this area”. It also anticipates the comparable store sales to plunge 8% to 11% in the current quarter.
Chipotle’s full-year guidance calls for a same-store sales increase in the range of a low to mid-single digit percentage.
“The epidemiologic evidence available at this time suggests that a common meal item or ingredient served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states is a likely source of this outbreak”, the CDC said on its website.
Advertisement
Chipotle said it tested ingredients before, but that it is moving to testing smaller batches and a larger number of samples.
