Every U.S. Chipotle Will Close One Day For Food Safety Meeting

By TIM DARNELL (Patch Staff)

(Image: Chipotle)

Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced that all of its restaurants will be closed on Feb. 8, 2016, for a company-wide meeting on last year’s E.coli outbreak and an even-more recent norovirus outbreak.

The topic of the meeting will be food safety, reports TheSource.com.

Several Chipotle locations had to close permanently during an E.coli outbreak in 2015. A norovirus outbreak later infected 141 people in Boston.

On Jan. 6, Chipotle was served with a federal grand jury subpoena regarding a norovirus outbreak last year at one of its California restaurants. Chipotle is required to produce documents that are tied to the Simi Valley restaurant where the virus was detected.

Company sales fell 30 percent in December.

Chipotle will be doubling up on the amount of free food for customers when it reopens. Chipotle has locations throughout the metro Atlanta area, including Buckhead, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, North Druid Hills, Decatur, Smyrna-Vinings, Marietta and Kennesaw.

CEO Steve Ellis issued the following statement regarding the recent crises: ”I’m hopeful that the CDC will call this over soon. We know that Chipotle is as safe as it’s ever been before. We are all very confident that this E. coli outbreak would not happen again.”