A Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in Massachusetts that was voluntarily closed Tuesday reopened Thursday with a clean bill of health, staff at the restaurant confirmed.
Management of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. closed the Billerica, Mass., restaurant after several employees fell ill.
New reports said that an employee was confirmed to be infected with norovirus, but NRN was not able to confirm this with the health department. Norovirus had previously sickened Chipotle customers in Boston and California.
Billerica is about 20 miles outside of Boston. No customers were reported to have fallen ill due to eating at the location.
Chipotle released the following statement Wednesday:
“Health inspectors visited our Billerica, Mass., restaurant today and found it to be nice, clean, and in great shape, which is consistent with the perfect health inspection score of 100% this restaurant received less than a week ago, on March 3. The health department was impressed by Chipotle: our paid sick leave policy, our procedures for excellent sanitation, and our proactive approach to making certain that no one worked while sick. We look forward to opening tomorrow.
“We closed the restaurant on Tuesday after four of our employees — none of whom worked while sick — called to say they were at home and not feeling well. The health department has no reports of customer illness at this restaurant.”
Chipotle restaurants experienced multiple foodborne illness outbreaks in the second half of 2015, including an E. coli outbreak in several states and salmonella in Minneapolis, resulting in tumbling sales during the fourth quarter of 2015 and into January.
The Denver-based fast-casual chain closed its 1,971 restaurants for lunch on Feb. 8 for a highly publicized companywide meeting to discuss its new food-safety initiatives with its employees.
“We are certainly happy to be open again and getting back to business as usual,” Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said in an email. “These employees absolutely made the right decision by not coming to work while sick, and we took a number of other steps to help ensure that our restaurant is safe as it can be.”
Correction: March 15, 2016 This story has been updated to reflect that NRN was not able to confirm that a Chipotle employee was sickened with norovirus.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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