Chipotle Meeting Outlines Food Safety to Workers and Message for Public; New York Times, 2/8/16

Stephanie Strom, New York Times; Chipotle Meeting Outlines Food Safety to Workers and Message for Public:

"Chipotle Mexican Grill closed its more than 2,000 restaurants for four hours on Monday to hold a “virtual” town hall meeting with its employees about steps it said it was taking to improve food safety and regain consumers’ trust...

Marketing experts applauded the company for its transparency about the meeting, but said the company would need to do a lot more to win back the trust of consumers. Chipotle has experienced six food safety failures involving norovirus, salmonella and E. coli since July, with more than 500 customers reporting that they fell ill afterward. Most of those illnesses were associated with two outbreaks of norovirus.

“Whether that’s sufficient to persuade consumers to come back in a significant way is questionable,” said Allen Adamson, founder of BrandSimple, a marketing consultancy. “It’s going to take significant meaningful action that goes beyond telling employees to be more careful and, unfortunately, some time before consumers start to believe it.”

Mr. Adamson said the best example of a company regaining consumer trust was of Tylenol in 1982 after seven people died after taking medicine that had been tampered with...

Chipotle has started its most expensive marketing and promotion campaign ever and plans to spend some $50 million to try to lure existing customers back into its restaurants and communicate the steps it has taken to improve its food safety practices."