Why Chipotle Is Closing Its Doors Across the Country Today
Chipotle is closed until 3 p.m. on Monday so employees can be retrained in food safety after a spate of health scares across the country.
The company says stores will open at 3 p.m. in their local time zones, instead of the usual 11 a.m. Chipotle expects about 50,000 employees to go to more than 400 locations, such as movie theaters and hotel conference rooms, where remarks by company executives will be shown live.
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The meeting will also be live-tweeted from the company’s handle @chipotletweets, and a Periscope of the event starts at noon ET.
The meeting comes after Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. saw its sales slammed by food scares, including an E. coli outbreak and norovirus cases.
Not surprisingly, the closing of the popular fast food spot caused a minor freak-out on Twitter.
More: California Probe Widens Into National Investigation
News outlets and normal folks alike reported the news and lamented that they’d have to go without their lunchtime burritos.
Some competing restaurants took advantage of the opportunity to offer discounts. Moe’s Southwest Grill tweeted: “Unlike others, we’re open all day today. Click below for an awesome offer.” Clicking through leads Twitter users to a “buy one, get one free” coupon offer.
Despite both local and federal investigations into what caused the E. coli and norovirus breakouts, a root cause for them has yet to be found.
More than 50 people across 14 U.S. states fell ill in two E. coli outbreaks last year after eating at Chipotle’s outlets. Norovirus outbreaks were also reported in Massachusetts and California.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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