I would’ve guessed with all the bad press surrounding Chipotle Mexican Grill, there would be no lines during the lunch hour. But that guess would be wrong. On a recent visit to my nearest Chipotle (on M Street), the line was practically out the door at 12:30 p.m. As it turns out, there are fans of the chain who are willing to take the risk
Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis met with Chipotle die-hards Anne and Jeff Owens, who went to one of the chain’s locations after their wedding. They also make a point of eating there on their anniversary. As Anne explained to the Post, “We’re totally willing to throw up a little for tradition.”
The word “cult” comes to mind:
But what will these acolytes do on February 8 when most of the chain’s restaurants close for lunch? Perhaps they ought to be thankful the employees will all be attending a food safety meeting so no one else has to go through what one former devotee, Chris Collins, went through in Oregon. (Collins is currently suing Chipotle.)
In reality, many people seem to be scared off by all the negative press. Since the summer, at least 500 people have been sickened from eating at the Tex-Mex chain. The contaminations are linked to e. coli, salmonella, and norovirus. In fact, a federal investigation is underway concerning a California location where an employee wreaked havoc by showing up to work despite suffering from norovirus, exposing coworkers and customers alike. In Boston, norovirus was also to blame for sickening more than 140 people, mostly students from Boston College and even members of the men’s basketball team. (While food safety on the premises is important, the other concern involves the conditions at the farms where the locally harvested vegetables are handled.)
For the first time since the company went public, same store sales for the quarter declined—by 14.6 percent from a year ago. The stock still trades at $470 per share as of this writing. That’s higher than Starbucks ($57 a share), McDonald’s ($116), and even Apple ($97), although Chipotle stock had been as high as $758 a share.
None of this would be headline news if we weren’t so obsessed with feeling good about the sourcing of our food plus our addiction to the burrito, something that has been thoroughly Americanized. I was reminded of a conversation I had with the Mexican celebrity chef Patricia Jinich. “They changed the name from burrita or burra to burro or burrito,” said the host of Pati’s Mexican Table. “And they completely transformed the inside because in Mexico we have one ingredient that you can really taste. Here they put everything inside of the burrito. To Mexicans, that’s not a burrita, that’s like a bomb. The Mexican way of eating burritas and burras is much more delicate than the burrito—you just stuff [the burrito] with a thousand things. You can barely taste what you are eating.” (Yes, I was also reminded of Taco Town.)
