Starting in 2015, an E.coli outbreak forced the closure of dozens of restaurants in Oregon and Washington and norovirus sickened more than 100 patrons in Boston. The chain last summer closed an Ohio restaurant for a day of cleaning after 647 customers became ill due to what health officials determined was due to a toxin that occurs in food left at unsafe temperatures.
But Chipotle handles things differently these days in its 2,500 restaurants, acccording to Niccol. "We have a very different food-safety culture than we did two years ago," he said. "Nobody gets to the back of the restaurant without going through a wellness check."
The efforts to safeguard against illness extends beyond encouraging sick workers to stay home to trying to ensure germs from customers don't spread, according to Niccol, who came to Chipotle nearly two years ago from Taco Bell.
Tables at Chipotle restaurants these days are cleaned with a norovirus-killing cleaner, Niccol said.
"There's probably people in here that might have the common cold. Even if we clean up after you, and we don't use a cleaner that kills that germ, it hangs around for the next customer," he said. "Even though our team member did nothing wrong — there was nothing wrong with our food — we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard to make sure that the dining room gets sanitized in a way that it hasn't been in the past."