Lessons learned from multistate outbreaks of Escherichia coli O26 linked to Chipotle
Supun Sandaru Fernando
North Dakota State University
Introduction
Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle who graduated from the University of Colorado and then from the Culinary Institute of America, opened Chipotle in 1993 as to make money to fund his fine-dining restaurant that he dreamed. The initial idea of back up business took off and within one month, it started selling 1,000 burritos per day which exceeding the original goal of at least 107 burritos per day (Daszkowski, 2017). Today, Chipotle is a leading fast casual Mexican style food restaurant where it accounted for $3.9 billion revenue in 2016 and which has 2,250 restaurants in U.S with over 64,570 employees …show more content…
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local officials investigated two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections linked to Chipotle Mexican grill (U.S Food and Drug Administration, 2016). In the initial outbreak, among 11 states, there were 55 people infected and 21 hospitalized due to STEC O26 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). During the second outbreak among 3 states, there were 5 people infected with a different strain of STEC O26 and 1 ill person was hospitalized (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016).
The vision of Chipotle was to transform the ordinary fast food template in to a quick and healthy service (Cafferty, 2017). But giving up Chipotle’s mission of “better food accessible to everyone” to the E. coli in a contamination crisis, may have lead the company to collapse. (Cafferty, 2017). In view of understanding what happened during Chipotle’s E. coli food crisis, this paper explores the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis actions taken by Chipotle and corresponding authorities and lessons that can be used to construct best practices for company practitioners.
Research
Supun Sandaru Fernando
North Dakota State University
Introduction
Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle who graduated from the University of Colorado and then from the Culinary Institute of America, opened Chipotle in 1993 as to make money to fund his fine-dining restaurant that he dreamed. The initial idea of back up business took off and within one month, it started selling 1,000 burritos per day which exceeding the original goal of at least 107 burritos per day (Daszkowski, 2017). Today, Chipotle is a leading fast casual Mexican style food restaurant where it accounted for $3.9 billion revenue in 2016 and which has 2,250 restaurants in U.S with over 64,570 employees …show more content…
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local officials investigated two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections linked to Chipotle Mexican grill (U.S Food and Drug Administration, 2016). In the initial outbreak, among 11 states, there were 55 people infected and 21 hospitalized due to STEC O26 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). During the second outbreak among 3 states, there were 5 people infected with a different strain of STEC O26 and 1 ill person was hospitalized (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016).
The vision of Chipotle was to transform the ordinary fast food template in to a quick and healthy service (Cafferty, 2017). But giving up Chipotle’s mission of “better food accessible to everyone” to the E. coli in a contamination crisis, may have lead the company to collapse. (Cafferty, 2017). In view of understanding what happened during Chipotle’s E. coli food crisis, this paper explores the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis actions taken by Chipotle and corresponding authorities and lessons that can be used to construct best practices for company practitioners.
Research