No Lunch At Chipotle Monday
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Those who make it a habit to kick off their work weeks with lunch at Chipotle will have to come up with an alternate solution this week.
All restaurant locations will not be opening until 3 p.m. Monday -- instead of the standard 11 a.m. -- so workers can attend meetings about the chain's recent food safety scares.
Chipotle expects about a half a million workers to go to more than 400 locations, such as movie theaters or hotel conference rooms, to hear remarks from company executives.
The company's sales dropped 36 percent in January after the E. coli outbreak and norovirus cases.
Last month, University of St. Thomas marketing professor Sandy Rathod said shutting down the Mexican grill chain nationwide, even for a few hours, would send a statement.
"Chipotle has been able to kind of hobble along for quite some time without really addressing the major issue, and now they're going to," Rathod said. "They could do it outside business hours, right? But they're doing it during their prime time because they want people to pay attention."
To help make up for the void left by their company meeting, Chipotle is offering a "rain check."
From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., diners can enter their phone number online to receive a text message rain check offer.