Will Chipotle recover from outbreaks and a criminal probe?

In the wake of several disease outbreaks, the popular Mexican restaurant chain has now been served a federal subpoena and is under criminal investigation.

Chipotle said sales trends “may be significantly influenced by further developments”.

Denver-based Chipotle in December was served with a federal grand jury subpoena from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, according to a January 6 Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the company.

Chipotle experienced an incident involving norovirus at a restaurant in Brighton, Mass., during the week of December 7, which worsened the adverse financial and operating impacts experienced from previous E. coli incidents in October and November, according to the S.E.C. filing.

The subpoena will require the company to surrender a broad range of documents that are related to the norovirus outbreak at a restaurant in Simi Valley, California, in which over 200 people became ill, including 17 workers at the store.

Chipotle announced it had received the subpoena back in December of previous year and was part of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration, adding a federal grand jury will make a decision as to whether or not or file charges.

“We intend to fully cooperate in the investigation”, Chipotle officials said in the report.

The cause of the E. coli outbreak has not yet been identified… It has been the first decline for the company since it went public more than nine years ago.

He said Chipotle had been cooperative with the county’s investigation, which uncovered issues such as unclean equipment and employees without the necessary food handling permits.

Beach also noted that complaints were brought forth to the attention of Chipotle about the illnesses on Tuesday, Aug. 18, and shut down the restaurant promptly but failed to notify the county about the incident until the restaurant was reopened. The county was not alerted to the illnesses until the next day, at which point the restaurant had already re-opened.

Going forward in rebuilding its image Chipotle has use full page ads to apologize to customers around the country.

The company will never know what ingredient was to blame for the E. coli cases according to Co-CEO Steve Ells. The common factor among all of them was a Chipotle restaurant that operates in Simi Valley.