Chipotle's Food-Safety Crisis

The story

Chipotle Mexican Grill built its reputation on a simple idea: fast food made with fresh, high-quality ingredients. Founded by chef Steve Ells, the chain grew quickly by promising customers better food than typical fast food. By 2015, it had become one of the most admired restaurant companies in America. Then customers started getting sick.

In August 2015, at a Chipotle in Simi Valley, California, 234 customers and employees became ill with norovirus, a very contagious stomach virus. Federal prosecutors later said an employee who had vomited was sent home, but the illness was not reported inside the company as required, and safety steps were not taken until two days later.

That fall, the problem grew much bigger. From October to December 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, tracked an outbreak of a type of E. coli bacteria among people who had eaten at Chipotle. In the end, 55 people in 11 states got sick, and 21 went to the hospital. A second, smaller E. coli outbreak sickened five more people in three states. Investigators never identified which ingredient was to blame. In December 2015, about 140 people, many of them Boston College students, got norovirus after eating food from a Chipotle near campus. Prosecutors said a sick employee had been told to keep working.

The news coverage was enormous, and customers stayed away. Chipotle temporarily closed dozens of restaurants and announced new food-safety procedures, including more food testing. On February 8, 2016, it closed every restaurant for several hours to hold a national meeting with employees about food safety. The CDC said the E. coli outbreaks appeared to be over on February 1, 2016. But the damage was done. In the first three months of 2016, Chipotle's revenue fell 23.4 percent to about $834.5 million, sales at restaurants open at least a year dropped 29.7 percent, and the company lost $26.4 million.

The trouble did not end there. In July 2018, nearly 650 people got sick after eating at a Chipotle in Powell, Ohio, from bacteria that grow when food is not kept at the right temperature. In 2018, the company hired a new chief executive, Brian Niccol, and Steve Ells stepped back to become chairman.

In April 2020, Chipotle settled federal criminal charges with the U.S. Justice Department. It was charged with two counts of serving adulterated, or contaminated, food. Under a deferred prosecution agreement, Chipotle agreed to pay a $25 million fine, the largest ever in a food-safety case, and to improve its safety program; the charges would be dropped if it complied. Prosecutors said more than 1,100 people were sickened in outbreaks from 2015 to 2018. The U.S. attorney said Chipotle "failed to ensure that its employees both understood and complied with its food safety protocols." The company admitted its sick-leave rules had not been properly enforced.

The lesson is that rules on paper are not enough. Chipotle had safety policies, but sick workers still came in, and food was not always kept at safe temperatures. For any business that serves the public, safety has to be practiced every day, and workers need to feel able to stay home when they are sick.