A year after food safety scares, Chipotle has a new set of problems; Washington Post, 12/14/16

Sarah Halzack, Washington Post; A year after food safety scares, Chipotle has a new set of problems:

"“The data, everything that we have, suggest that there are not large numbers of customers staying away from Chipotle because they feel like either we didn’t address the problem properly or that they are afraid of Chipotle,” said Mark Crumpacker, the restaurant’s chief marketing and development officer.

Instead, the company is having trouble getting the basics right: Throughput is down, meaning customers are facing frustratingly long lines. The dining room tables and drink stations are often a mess. And patrons are constantly finding that the burrito assembly line is out of an ingredient or two.

In other words, it seems the core source of Chipotle’s difficulty right now is convincing people it is enjoyable to eat at Chipotle — a remarkable turn of events for a company that was not long ago the darling of the industry for its seemingly unstoppable sales growth."