Chipotle tries to stop the bleeding by addressing food safety issues head on
Chipotle Mexican Grill is again trying to get its mojo working, this time by letting its CEO lay out what went wrong and how it’s going to fix it.
The fast food chain, once the top Mexican chain in the US (since unseated by Moe’s Southwest Grill), continues to try to figure out how to stop its fall from grace after a very public and prolonged E. coli episode that saw its stocks and sales plummet. It shuttered some stores, hired a new PR firm, tried to lure people back in with coupons for free burritos and gave people incentives with a rewards program. The company also recently settled with more than 100 customers who became sick from their food with company spokesperson Chris Arnold saying, in a statement that "We are a company that does the right things for our customers and we simply believed settling these claims was the right thing to do."
None of those efforts have led to a turnaround. The latest push is to try to expand in Europe, where it currently has seven restaurants in three countries, and doesn’t have the baggage it has in the states.
But the US is still its main market and there is still a chance, even with increased competition from other fast-casual spots, for the Denver-based Chipotle to get market share back. One way they are doing that is to tackle the food safety issue head on, dedicating a section of its website to food safety advancements. The section shows an eight-step process of how it keeps food safe for customers, with an intro that says: “Ensuring that all of our fresh ingredients are as safe as possible is a serious effort. Not only do we need to work closely with our suppliers to ensure that the ingredients we buy are safe, but we also need to make sure that once those ingredients reach our restaurants, they are handled and prepared in the safest way possible.”
The lead-in to the whole page features a two-and-a-half minute video with the company’s founder and CEO, Steve Ells, talking about the history and integrity of the company, with one big mea culpa.
“In 2015 we failed to live up to our own food safety standards, and in so doing, we let our customers down,” Ells says frankly in the video. He goes on to say that he promised the customers at the time that the chain would elevate its food safety program, and goes on to describe how they are doing that through supplier interventions, advanced technology, farmer support and training, and more scrutiny at the individual restaurant level.
If Chipotle can regain its ground with these latest steps, it will certainly be the biggest uphill climb that has succeeded after a major hit in the social media era. The lambasting the chain took after the outbreak was relentless, but the restaurant still has plenty of fans who post their continuing love for the food, and that could spell a turnaround of fortune.