
Chipotle Eats Itself - Overtonwindow
https://www.fastcompany.com/3064068/chipotle-eats-itself
======
marklyon
So, in addition to selling their soul in the hope that doing so will prevent
risk, do they not grasp that being unable to explain the cause of the
illnesses keeps people away?

I'd feel far more comfortable with Chipotle if they could definitively say,
"It appears uncooked cilantro in our rice was harboring E. coli; we've changed
how we prepare that item and believe the problem is fixed." Instead, we now
have a nebulous "central kitchens work for other companies, so now we're doing
it" solution. As little as I cared about their feel-good "local food"
drumbeat, it bothers me that they turned away from that stance.

At the same time, I've not seen a slowing of the constant level of decline in
cleanliness at the stores near me. When they were opened, they were shiny a
new. Now, though, they've begun to attract a noticeable level of crud in the
corners and other hard-to-clean areas like the perforated wooden wall boards.
The kitchen areas look to have received a good once-over, but the stores show
the abuse they've suffered under high-volume visits.

What if people aren't sick from bacteria in the food, but from a nasty colony
on the underside of a table or chair or even wall leaned against while waiting
to order food that is often eaten in handheld form? Does the food safety
program encompass those areas too? If so, why doesn't it clearly show?

~~~
rdtsc
> Now, though, they've begun to attract a noticeable level of crud in the
> corners and other hard-to-clean areas like the perforated wooden wall
> boards.

Heh, I was wondering about it once waiting in line there. All those unpainted
pipes, wood panels and corrugated galvanized steel must be fun to keep clean.

I guess that's the downside of wanting to look the opposite of McDonalds and
White Castles with tiles everywhere. There is usually a reason why those
places look like they do -- they easier to keep clean. Believe it or not White
Castle despite its popular reputation for slimy burgers is one of the cleanest
food chains (knew someone working for the insurance company which provides
insurance for it).

~~~
nihonde
Mos Burger in Japan has a similarly "rustic" decor but they're immaculate. It
comes down to the pride and/or obligation that employees feel to keep the
place clean. Hard to find in the USA, and relatively easy to find in Japan. It
probably relates directly to the hygiene habits of the individuals themselves
in their personal life.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It comes down to the pride and /or obligation that employees feel to keep
> the place clean_

From the article, quoting a Chipotle worker:

"Why do we earn almost the same as McDonald’s workers when the care we put in
is 20 times what they do?"

~~~
nihonde
Yeah, and Japanese fast food employees make the same or less unless you adjust
for national healthcare and other social services, I suppose. It's definitely
a subsistence wage here at best.

------
rdtsc
> Yet Chipotle has had no choice but to grapple with the reality that its
> prestige status has evaporated.

That's the key. It lost at its supposed top mission to - provide wholesome
food with healthy ingredients, not like those other cheap / dirty fast food
places.

Yes Tesla had an issue, Dole did. Tesla is new, its mission is to make really
cool cars. Dole's is selling food, but its mission is to provide bulks
processed foods, which a large majority of people wouldn't honestly claim is
healthy or wholesome.

I can't explain but, yes, I lost the desire to eat there. I know rationally it
doesn't make sense. But we have walked too many times past a Chipotle we used
to go to and said "meh maybe next time". Next time never comes somehow.

~~~
jessaustin
I have such good memories of Chipotle from a decade ago and earlier. I'm in a
rural area recently so I hadn't been to one in some time. The last time I went
to one (after their troubles; I figured my odds weren't too bad), I was
surprised at how dirty the restaurant was and how rude the staff was (without
my even mentioning the former condition). If Chipotle's prices were like Taco
Bell's I could tolerate those conditions, but given their expense I won't be
back. After all most Taco Bells are clean and polite, and one generally can
tell which ones won't be before walking in.

~~~
SyneRyder
> given their expense I won't be back

I wonder if that's part of the company's problem, that the E-Coli incident
just gave people a reason to rethink their habits? I used to eat a lot at a
similar burrito restaurant in Australia, but something happened to make me
realize I was paying twice as much for a meal there than I would at Subway,
and for all the burrito restaurant's "healthy food" claims I was starting to
put on weight, so I stopped eating there.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
The awkward price is why I, my family, my friends, my coworkers, and everyone
else I know basically stopped going there.

Why wait in a slow line, pay a premium price, and spend twice as long to chow
on a burrito or bowl as it would take you to eat a burger or taco? Sure the
food is good, but the hassle is just a bit much. If I wanted to put up with
all of that I prefer to just spend a few bucks more and go to a proper
restaurant.

~~~
nerdponx
The price is double that of the burger because the quality of the food is also
a double that of a burger.

I never noticed how good chipotles ingredients were until I started eating
bowls instead of burritos. Those massive burritos are a sloppy tube of
undifferentiated food matter that totally obscures the quality of the food.

Personally I think they should institute a "small size" burrito, for a lower
price. Moe's does this.

~~~
twoodfin
_Personally I think they should institute a "small size" burrito, for a lower
price. Moe's does this._

I'd like that, but I can see why they don't. I doubt the savings on
ingredients would be adequate for them to preserve their margins yet offer a
price point that would seem reasonable to the consumer. Very few would be
interested if it were only (say) 15 cents cheaper.

~~~
nerdponx
The smaller size at Moes is at least a dollar cheaper, or at least it was when
I went there last

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DrScump
Plans and procedures are only as good as the managers and employees who
implement and abide by them... or fail to.

My favorite fast-burger chain used to be Carl's Jr. Then, one day, I noticed
an employee dip her hands into a bucket oddly situated on the counter behind
the registers. Over time, I realized that the same bucket was _always there_ ,
and employees would dip their hands in there when coming in from outside, the
restroom, etc.

I then realized that they were doing this _in lieu of washing their hands_
with running water.

I never went back.

The other two Carl's Jr. in the area are gone now, after decades of operation
in their locations.

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bambax
The US seems obsessed with food safety in a manner that I'm not sure exist in
other cultures. Do statistics exist of bacterial outbreaks per country, is it
actually worse in the US than elsewhere?

Last year I bought Harold Mcgee's "Keys to good cooking" but couldn't go
through it as all he talks about isn't "cooking" but telling you all the
manners in which food is going to kill you.

(Ironically, in the parts I did read he explains that his own father spent his
whole life eating raw meat and never suffered from it.)

Maybe the problem with the US is the number of people who buy meals from
restaurants, as opposed to cooking at home. If there's a problem in your own
kitchen the only people who are going to get sick are members of your family;
if there's a problem in a restaurant, or a restaurant chain, you have an
outbreak.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The US is in a weird position. If you look to Western Europe (say, France,
Britain, Germany) there's just as much regulation about food safety but a lot
of ingredients have a very different production pipeline than in the US. In
the US you have a lot of very aggressive processes designed to pump out cheap
meat and produce at low cost. Animals are raised in high density feedlots
(CAFOs), animals are routinely fed antibiotics to encourage weight gain, a lot
of food processing is heavily centralized, etc. This makes the spread of
pathogenic bacteria in animals much more prevalent and it raises the impact of
even small slip ups in sanitation resulting in contamination. On the farther
end of the scale (in places like China) you have essentially corrupt
governments where anything goes and you cannot guarantee the safety or
authenticity of nearly anything in the food production pipeline.

This problem persists regardless of whether you're talking about restaurant
meals or eating at home. There have been numerous food safety related recalls
not just of packaged and processed foods (ranging from pre-made meals to
peanut butter) but also of produce (ranging from spinach to sprouts to
zucchini). The problem is an overly centralized system with many faults in
regard to the prevention side of things and an over reliance on chemical
cleansers to prevent the spread of pathogens.

In short, in the US we have breeding grounds for these high impact pathogenic
bacteria coupled with systems that could hardly be more suited to spreading
disease rapidly and broadly while at the same time our protections are not
nearly up to the task.

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nestlequ1k
Chipotle's problems seem directly related to the Chipotle worker lawsuit. They
are deliberately trying to underpay their employees, and shockingly, the
product suffers.

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ramenmeal
Still lines at all the chipotle's near me. Is that not the case in other
areas?

~~~
csydas
I'm going to guess based on the article and other comments that it's not so
much "no one" is eating Chipotle as much as "fewer people than before" are
eating Chipotle. Certainly there are people still going for the food, but I
think the issue is more that there was a sizable drop that is reflected in the
finances.

I would imagine this sort of issue is one where it's easy to miss the forest
for the trees. I was never really a fan of Chipotle to begin with, but wasn't
bugged when I heard about the outbreak; it just seemed like a tradeoff in my
mind for less processed meats - you naturally expose yourself to dangers like
this. I wasn't aware that the fans of Chipotle thought differently, but
apparently they did and I guess the chain mishandled the PR on the event?

~~~
FT_intern
What do you mean by less processed meat?

~~~
rincebrain
tl;dr - the two differences between buying raw chicken breasts and cooking
them yourself, and buying precooked premade chicken meals and heating them.

One of the things that Chipotle used to (and still, to some extent) do
differently was that they turned raw meat into cooked meat onsite, rather than
taking precooked frozen meat from central facilities and reheating it.

(They also purportedly have very stringent guidelines about what they permit
to be done to the animals the meat comes from; I don't know what those
requirements are, so I can't say how strict they are.)

The tradeoff with that, combined with their local sourcing guidelines, is that
they'd have far more distinct pipelines and places that they needed to ensure
a lack of contamination in.

The article covers them having now switched to an approach which opponents
refer to as "precooking" the meat in large central facilities, to kill
pathogens effectively, while also maintaining as much of their "fresh food
prepared right in the restaurant" ethos as they can muster.

(Not being a chef, it seems like they basically cook the meat to something
like medium-rare, slowly, but at sufficient temperature to kill pathogens, and
then cool it and cook it the rest of the way at restaurants.)

------
Frogolocalypse
Yikes. 20/20 hindsight of course, but that definitely looked like an accident
waiting to happen.

------
GarrisonPrime
I don't get why everyone thinks the E. coli outbreak was such a big deal. I've
only heard this discussed in "articles" and by "experts". Not real people in
my life. The E. coli thing is not not why I, my family, my friends, my
coworkers, and everyone else I know doesn't eat there anymore.

We don't eat there because:

(1) It's at an awkward price-point and inconvenient food nature. Sure it's
good food, but if I'm in the market for fast-food stuff I'm likely not in the
mood to wait in a slow line, pay that premium price, and spend twice or three
times as much time to eat a burrito or bowl as it would to eat a burger or
taco. If I'm going to go through all of that, I might as well pay just a
couple of dollars more and go to a proper restaurant.

(2) We stopped hearing about Chipotle, and often forget it even exists. It's
been probably a year since I've seen or heard any advertising from them aside
from a "student discount 5% off Thursdays from 5pm-7pm only" banner tied to
their awning when I drive by.

~~~
ceras
If you check out the graph in the article, the sales drop was sharp, abrupt,
and coincided with the outbreaks:
[https://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagec...](https://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-
small/inline/2016/10/3064068-inline-i-3-finals-chipotle-crisis-the-dip.png)

Anecdotally, I definitely heard the outbreak discussed frequently here in NY
-- probably because I regularly eat there, and so did my friends (up until the
outbreak anyway). Maybe you didn't since your friend circle stopped eating
there before the outbreak?

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rollthehard6
Reminiscent of the 1993 Jack in the Box E Coli outbreak - they bounced back,
I'm sure Chipotle can too.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_outbreak)

~~~
niftich
The article goes into a good amount of detail on _why_ this case is different
from that one, and why they were able to recover so well (e.g. slashing
prices, humorous ad campaign); it also notes that Chipotle likely won't be
able to use the same tactics because it'd cheapen their intended 'premium'
brand.

------
Fomite
Part of it for my was the hypocrisy of it. A bunch of ad campaigns about their
virtuous, ethical, "healthy" food (with a staggering amount of sodium and
calories), preachy, unscientific signs about the evils of GMOs...

While failing at the fundamentals of food safety.

------
lukeschlather
The article kind-of mentions it, but if I'm reading what they're saying right,
Chipotle served 1.5 million people per day before the outbreak. 265k people
get E. Coli annually, and that's about 0.08% of the US population. 0.08% of
1.5 million is a little over 1000.

So 500 confirmed cases of E. Coli linked to Chipotle over the course of a year
is actually better than the national average?

~~~
dogma1138
This is not how statistics and causal connections work.

266k don't get E. Coli out of thin air, clustering and timing is also
important as well as the specific culture of the bacterium.

You can't just take some random statistics and another one and extrapolate a
relationship from it.

~~~
lukeschlather
The fact is we haven't figured out how to stop E. Coli. Some amount of cross-
contamination is going to happen. (Especially when you have animal products
mixing with vegetables.) Yes, there was a real contamination event at
Chipotle. What I'm asking is if we have scientific evidence that Chipotle was
negligent in any way, and from everything I've read the answer is no, there is
no process Chipotle could have followed to avoid this problem. Some have
suggested that their use of organic and non-GMO ingredients contributed to the
issue, but that's a scientific claim and I'd love to see some evidence.

If you have data that suggest otherwise, I'd love to see it.

~~~
dogma1138
Organic produce is more likely to be contaminated with E. Coli since they will
use compost and manure instead of "chemical fertilizers" unless the organic
farmers are specifically regulated to handle manure with a process that will
make it safer. Raw manure is banned for good reasons in most countries, in
some countries it's also specifically banned for organic produce.

------
tedunangst
> which essentially sterilizes food such as chorizo by blasting it with 87,000
> pounds of water pressure for three minutes.

How does the chorizo survive that?

~~~
mrob
"Blasting" is bad choice of word, because it makes you think of turning a high
pressure hose on the food. "Crushing" would be a better word, because the food
is completely surrounded by water.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascalization)

~~~
tedunangst
Ah, and it either doesn't affect the flavor or it does or it doesn't or it
does.

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stefs
well great: autoplay video (with sound) and not even when you scroll in view,
no - the video is several pages down. even if i were interested in watching it
or some other video on the site, i would have to find and restart or stop this
one first.

i'm not sure if i'm even interested in reopening the tab and reading the
article now.

------
spectrum1234
This article is super long. One reason I won't read it all is explained well
in the first 2% of the article:

"When a listeria outbreak caused by Dole’s packaged salads was linked to four
deaths last year, the public outcry was not nearly as intense or sustained
(despite an ongoing federal investigation). When Tesla reported its first
driver fatality while using its Autopilot feature last June, it didn’t affect
the company’s stock price at all. Why were these deaths only blips for Dole’s
and Tesla’s reputations? By contrast, Chipotle spent a year in hell even
though no one died—and more than 265,000 Americans get sick annually from
illnesses linked to E. coli."

...it just doesn't seem like real news to me because it isn't.

What are the cliff notes?

~~~
SyneRyder
It's a Long Read, an in-depth article (split into chapters!) about an incident
that happened a while ago & how the company has been dealing with its
aftermath over that time. It's the sort of article that used to sell on the
Kindle store as a "Kindle Single" for 99c.

The Cliff Notes version is that sales at Chipotle are down 30% - but if you're
looking for "news" or "Cliff Notes", this isn't the kind of article you would
be interested in.

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disposablezero
Imagining a giant, circular burrito going PyPy on itself, because a 6 ft donut
bowl just doesn't scream Chipotle-centipede.

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throwaway_exer
1) For those who haven't followed the Chipotle crisis, apparently they were
doing more ingredient prep in-store instead of at regional kitchen centers.
That meant quality and cleanliness standards were not uniform. They say they
have changed that policy.

2) It looks like mgmt. did not want to do a public information campaign
because then you're telling people, who may not all know yet, that there's a
problem. In other words, 1960's-style crisis mgmt. to "protect" their brand.

3) Also, the executives of Chipotle simply refuse to make top mgmt. changes
and in fact are among the highest-paid executives in human history (according
to the article.)

4) One store had serious "HR issues" with managers preying on underage part-
time staff, resulting in a multi-million dollar payout. I'll leave it at that.

