Job # 1 for Restaurants - Food Safety

The new cover of Businessweek is a Chipotle burrito — vomiting

Excerpt:

Chipotle management has pledged to enhance its efforts on food safety, with co-CEO Steve Ells pledging to make Chipotle "the safest place to eat."

This effort from Chipotle, as outlined in the Businessweek story and other reports, will most likely see more of the company's food preparation moved to central facilities, while less of its food will be locally sourced in the meantime.

Businessweek reports that Chipotle's pork and beef, for example, are braised at facilities outside Chicago. The company's beans are made in Denver. And so on.

On Tuesday, JPMorgan analyst John Ivankoe downgraded the stock to "Neutral" from "Overweight," citing the seemingly endless series of negative headlines about the company. "The new news flow shows the impact continuing and more importantly a management team that seems to be scrambling for answers," Ivankoe wrote. Earlier this month, Chipotle warned that its fourth-quarter sales would drop sharply in the wake of the E. coli breakout and other negative headlines. This latest cover won't help.

Comment: Many diss McDonalds. We eat there infrequently ... eg this Monday of this week when I had a Dr appointment. We hadn't had lunch as we returned at 12:30 ish and grabbed a couple of burgers from their drive-through. Never got sick at McDonalds! And it is a good stock MCD. CMG on the other hand ($200 off year's high)! Image is screen grab from above article,