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Locally grown produce, prepared fresh in restaurants—that’s a big part of what Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s identity is all about. But after two foodborne illness outbreaks, a tumbling share price and a grand jury subpoena, that farm-to-fork ethos is beginning to look like it’s part of the problem, according to food industry experts. It all comes down to guacamole—or at least, who’s making sure your guacamole is safe to eat. Traditionally, that’s a centralized, nationalized process: a restaurant chain works with large producers and distributors. Large contracts are at stake, so those agents are more willing to make changes such as new kinds of food testing, according to food experts. But “it’s a little more difficult with [Chipotle’s] philosophy,” said David Plunkett, a food safety attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Those middlemen don’t exist in the farm-to-fork model, meaning the risk and responsibility for food safety shift to the restaurant chain, he and other experts said—and so do the costs. Thus, while Chipotle’s emphasis on supporting small farms draws in ethically-oriented eaters, it’s also closely connected to what has raised customer concerns. Chipotle stock CMG, -2.19% has lost 42% in the last three months, after an outbreak of E.coli sickened customers across 12 states, and a separate incident of norovirus sickened more than 130 students in Boston. The company has responded to the crisis with a pledge to become an industry leader in food safety, hiring experts to help with a cleanup and implementing new testing across its network. As part of the changes, the company has modified its farm-to-fork model. Some aspects of the new “enhanced food safety program” announced last month are a move toward a centralized production process, said Christopher Gaulke, a lecturer at Cornell University who teaches a food supply chain class. Cheese will arrive at restaurants already shredded, and tomatoes and cilantro—both types of produce that are more vulnerable to bacteria—will be chopped in a central location, Chipotle has said. The changes also shift the risk along the supply chain toward suppliers, having them use “DNA-based tests” on small batches of ingredients before shipping them to restaurants. At the restaurant level, there’s new employee training and a required blanching of several fresh produce items before cooking. “They're trying to continue using local suppliers as much as possible, but also make sure they're doing a good job,” CSPI’s Plunkett said. “If they could source nationally, they might have put that burden on their suppliers.” In eliminating the middleman, the risks of a farm-to-table model also rise. But the model can work, said Cornell’s Gaulke—“in the long term.” And while Chipotle’s new changes could help bolster consumer trust, he said, there’s also a “perceived freshness” value people gain when seeing food prepared before them, one that makes them more willing to, say, pay $10 for a burrito. These are all trade-offs the burrito giant is intimately familiar with. “We may be at a higher risk for food-borne illness outbreaks than some competitors due to our use of fresh produce and meats rather than frozen, and our reliance on employees cooking with traditional methods rather than automation,” the company wrote in a prescient SEC filing for the 2014 fiscal year. Thus farm-to-table, despite its ability to attract customers, “is more than just a marketing and a purchasing strategy,” said Paul Pendola, a food service director at market research firm Mintel. “And I believe Chipotle understood that,” he said. “And even more so now.”
