Chipotle to close all stores for one day in February

The Wall Street Journal reports the chain will be shuttering its stores on February 8 for a few hours to hold a national employee meeting to discuss its response to issues with E. coli and food safety.

After multiple food poisoning outbreaks, the restaurant’s stock price drastically plunged to more than a third over the last three months.

As ATTN: has reported, the company suffered a string of bacterial outbreaks recently, with hundreds of people getting sick from E. coli- and norovirus-contaminated food that was traced back to a number of its restaurants nationwide. Chipotle’s December sales were down 30 percent, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. After a month and half of outbreak-free news, Chipotle believes that the Centers of Disease Control will soon call an end to the outbreak.

A Seattle-based lawyer told the Chicago Tribune, he expect dozens of more lawsuits against Chipotle over food safety.

In order to regain consumer confidence, the company announced Wednesday at an investment conference in Orlando, Florida, it would be launching a marketing push in February that would include “inviting customers back” with direct mail offers. One of the norovirus outbreaks is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, in conjunction with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations.

On Feb. 8, expect to fulfill your burrito-related desires elsewhere – for a couple of hours.

It seems like popular Mexican food chain Chipotle is set on reclaiming its lost reputation as fast as possible.

Earlier in November Chipotle had to shut down 43 stores due to infection in 53 people in nine states.

Still, Ells said, “I don’t think we’ll ever be finished. We are all very confident that this E. coli outbreak would not happen again”, E News quoted Ells as saying.