Chronic Crisis

Chipotle is fighting yet another case of foodborne illness. This time it occurred in one of its Los Angeles restaurants. The firm is in a chronic crisis caused by some kind of failure in its logistics. There should be no way that contaminated products slip through its system, but they are. The chain will need to investigate again what went wrong. Was it restaurant specific or food delivered to the restaurant? If it was restricted to one building, how were edibles being handled? Was there a storage problem, an employee foul-up such as failing to wash one’s hands? If the fresh vegetables were carrying a bacteria, how did it get there? Did it happen in the field, at the time it was being picked, in transportation? Ideally Chipotle will discover a root cause and fix it once and for all time. But, so far that isn’t happening and the chain has had a loss of reputation as a result. There is no worse PR than for a restaurant to poison its customers.