Chipotle to retrain all workers on food safety

Chipotle Mexican Grill plans to retrain all of its restaurant workers nationwide on food safety after nearly 650 customers became ill after eating recently at one of its Ohio restaurants.

The company confirmed Thursday that it would launch the training next week after the episode in Powell, Ohio.

“Chipotle has a zero-tolerance policy for any violations of our stringent food safety standards and we are committed to doing all we can to ensure it does not happen again,” CEO Brian Niccol said in a statement. “Once we identified this incident, we acted quickly to close the Powell restaurant and implemented our food safety response protocols that include total replacement of all food inventory and complete cleaning and sanitization of the restaurant.”

Nearly 650 people “self-reported gastrointestinal symptoms” after eating there in late July, according to a report Thursday by Traci Whittaker of Ohio’s Delaware General Health District, which is investigating the matter.

Tests showed sickened customers had Clostridium perfringens, which “is a foodborne disease that occurs when food is left at an unsafe temperature,” Whittaker said.

Investigators could not pin down a specific ingredient that caused the problem, but testing is ongoing.

Although there were no indications that the Ohio incident had any connection to other restaurants, it nonetheless became newcomer “Brian Niccol’s first test as CEO,” Cowen stock analyst Andrew Charles wrote to investors.

The primary concern for the company surrounding the Ohio situation likely was the threat of renewed perception among customers that the food is unsafe, Charles said.

Niccol said Thursday that in addition to the retraining process, the company “will be adding to our daily food safety routines a recurring employee knowledge assessment of our rigorous food safety standards.” Niccol was under pressure to take decisive action to show the company is on top of food-safety issues.

Chipotle’s food safety woes began in 2015, when two E. coli outbreaks sickened 60 people in 14 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-two people were hospitalized. That year also saw norovirus outbreaks linked to restaurants in Southern California and Boston.

Last July, a small norovirus outbreak was linked to a Chipotle in Sterling, Virginia, and rodent sightings temporarily closed down a Dallas location in December. That month, customers reported getting sick after eating at a Chipotle in Los Angeles.

Nathan Bomey and Zlati Meyer