Feb. 03--Chipotle is closing its doors for a time on Monday. This is partly to make sure employees know the chain's new food safety procedures. This is partly to make sure the public knows the chain has new food safety procedures.
It's marketing as much as anything. Either way, Chipotle wants its restaurants to come away as clean as possible.
Perceptions, like viruses and other contaminants, can be tough to contain and control, and they can be just as pernicious in their own way.
While E. coli and norovirus reportedly made about 200 Chipotle customers sick toward the end of last year across several states, it's the company that's still unsteady on its feet.
Sales took a significant hit in response to the illnesses, as the chain closed out 2015 with its first quarterly decline in revenue since going public in 2006, and a 44 percent drop in profit.
And though Chipotle's share price cratered in mid-January, it's still off almost 40 percent from when the crisis began in October.
This is a chain that somehow made many people consider 1,000-calorie burritos bulging with sodium and cholesterol healthy. That's at the core of the Chipotle brand, and these episodes have badly eroded it.
Which is why it doesn't just have to do everything in its power to minimize the risk factors, it has to make a big show of it.
Forty-four percent of Chipotle customers considered it a healthy food option in June, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch research. By January, that number was down to 32 percent.
The company's own research says roughly 60 percent of fast-casual diners aware of the chain's foodborne illness problems indicate it's a reason to come in less often.
"Our research also indicates that once consumers are aware that food safety issues have been resolved, that many of them will come back into our restaurants," Mark Crumpacker, Chipotle's chief creative and development officer, told analysts this week. "Beginning next week, we are launching a variety of marketing programs designed to invite our customers back into our restaurants."
Step one is the brief shutdown. It's the day after the Super Bowl, so some people might feel a little bloated at lunchtime anyway. But OK, see how much Chipotle cares.
"The messages with regard to food safety are things that we drive out through PR communications and on our ... website and the new food safety website," Crumpacker said.
But complementing that will be the company's biggest-ever ad blitz, which Crumpacker said "with one small exception, does not mention food safety or the recent incidents."
Chipotle is not just looking to billboards, radio, print and digital through at least June; it's going to use other approaches, such as direct marketing by mail, mobile platforms and social media.
It's all of a piece. When it closes its doors Monday, Chipotle wants to close the doors on this sordid chapter.
After making clear that one hand is indeed washing the other -- and everything else -- its chief message will be to remind everyone that its food is delicious in hopes that the lingering aftertaste of E. coli and norovirus goes away.
Some believe Chipotle may be the victim of corporate sabotage, an easy question to ask but a hard one to answer for now.
What is known is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week closed the E. coli case but indicated it still didn't know exactly what food was the culprit. Also, Chipotle said a federal investigation of its food safety practices has broadened, with the latest subpoena requiring it to provide companywide documents dating back three years.
Chipotle has conceded it could have done more to ensure food safety; that's why it's making changes in how it stores and prepares food. This is at the core of what it intends to review with workers.
"By staying true to our food culture and unique people culture, and layering on our rigorous food safety program, we are confident that we are now in a position to aggressively welcome customers into our restaurants and restore customer confidence in the things that make Chipotle great," Monty Moran, a Chipotle co-CEO, said in a statement.
Yes, "aggressively welcome customers" sounds like something that happens to unsuspecting tourists who wander into the wrong part of an unfamiliar city and who awaken with no memory, no wallet and a throbbing headache.
But there is much to suggest Chipotle customers want to feel they can come back. Only 10 percent said they don't plan to ever return because of the E. coli and norovirus incidents, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey.
Thirty-two percent of Chipotle customers said they are frequenting the chain as often as they did before the crisis, 12 percent indicated they've resumed eating there but have cut back on frequency and 46 percent said they have stopped eating there but expect to be back at some point.
Chipotle wants everyone to notice that it has closed its doors, so they seem all the more inviting when they reopen a short while later.
philrosenthal@tribpub.com
