Chipotle Swot Analysis Paper

Chipotle Mexican Grill has become one of the fastest growing fast casual restaurants with over 2010 locations worldwide, 45,000 employees and over 3.2 billion dollars in revenue (Cavanaugh, 2016). The company’s mission statement, “Food with Integrity” highlights the importance of using naturally-grown ingredients that are locally sourced when possible (Chipotle, 2016). Much of Chipotle’s success can be contributed to the quality of food, customer service, and the companies focus on sustainability from its food sources. Over the past 10 months, Chipotle has had a series of serious outbreaks of E. Coli, Salmonella and norovirus outbreaks at its restaurants. This has resulted in temporarily store closures; drop in sales and negative press. Chipotle

Coli and the norovirus were, instead of initially focusing its efforts on its solutions and changes that it was making to prevent this from happening again. When a company has to explain they are losing, “It defines your weakness as a company instead of talking about what they’re going to do to make sure it’s never going to happen again.” (Nordrum, 2015) A bulk of its public relations came directly from the companies CO-CEO and founder Steve Ells. Steve Ells apologized directly to his customers on the Today Show which to many agree was the correct move, calling Chipotle “the safest place to eat” (Comcowich, 2015) Making such bold and absolute statements were considered a mistake, making promises that you might not be able to keep. It was the gamble that the company and CEO were willing to take, we now know that this crisis for Chipotle and its retooling is still news today, months after the outbreaks started. Chipotle has said that is may never know that exact cause of many of the individual

Many large investment firms like Fidelity Contrafund are holding firm on their entire stakes even with the recent performance and outbreaks affecting the funds return. Manager of the fund Will Danoff noted, "We held steady our investment in Chipotle, a longtime holding, deciding to hang in there, based in part on management's focus on productivity and comparable-restaurant sales," (Mclaughlin, 2016). Chipotle stock has already rebounded from its low, making due to positive changes in the kitchen and it’s production facilities that can prevent outbreaks like this in the future. Chipotle has continued to keep its customers current on the happenings via social media and traditional media outlets, introducing its new food safety program. It involves new steps for testing for bacteria that potentially cause disease and new procedures in its restaurants to keep ingredients from becoming contaminating raw ingredients such as tomatoes and limes (Charles, 2016). Long term investors have also been assured that the company plans to continue with the development of new locations. Growth with continue as the fast-casual chain plans on opening 220-235 restaurants in 2016, that’s after the opened 79 new restaurants in the fourth quarter of last year (Scipioni,