Can the Chipotle brand recover with recent company marketing moves? Chipotle Mexican Grill’s sinking sales and falling share prices follow a bacterial outbreak that sickened customers in at least 11 states.
When news of widespread food poisoning at the “food with integrity” restaurants first broke, the internet filled with rumors of a chain-wide shutdown. Those rumors become true February 8, as Chipotle closes for a national food safety meeting for all staff, prior to what company calls its “biggest marketing effort ever.”
Chipotle isn’t the first restaurant chain to grapple with food poisoning, but the others don’t tout local sourcing and sophisticated software to track ingredients from farm to table. That tracking software didn’t work so well. It was months before the company could pinpoint what ingredient was responsible for making people sick. That beef from Australia—so much for the local sourcing claim—was the culprit, is a further blow to the brand’s integrity claim.
Will Chipotle’s biggest marketing effort ever work to help the Chipotle brand recover?
What do customers think? We hit the streets to find out.