OPINION:
Boston College’s basketball team won’t be heading back to Chipotle anytime soon for its post-game meal. At least eight of its players recently contracted norovirus after eating there, part of an outbreak that infected more than 100 students.
This marks the fifth outbreak of food-borne illness linked to Chipotle this year. Like Chinese water torture, the story has kept dripping as the crisis expanded from an E. coli outbreak in the Pacific Northwest to seven other states. As a result, Chipotle’s stock has plummeted close to 30 percent since October.
Chipotle has long been viewed with envy by many businesses, especially in the restaurant industry, looking to build off of its self-congratulatory food narrative. Now, “being the next Chipotle” may be used as a cautionary phrase.
What’s particularly bad for Chipotle is that the news strikes at the heart of the company’s brand and marketing. Chipotle’s motto is “Food with Integrity,” and for years the company has advertised itself as offering cleaner, healthier food than other restaurants. How ironic that in reality its food has proven to be more germ-infected and unhealthy than its competitors. Chipotle’s image took years to build, but only a moment to crumble.
Ironically, Chipotle is now turning for help toward the system it has previously trashed. One-third of Chipotle restaurants stopped serving pork this year because they couldn’t find a supplier that met its meaningless “no antibiotics” boast. Eventually it settled on a United Kingdom producer but agreed to allow the supplier to use antibiotics to treat disease.
The fluff is meaningless. Consider the following: Chipotle ran ads implying that its “antibiotic-free” meat didn’t have drug residues, yet it left out the fact that all meat is free of antibiotics. Chipotle acts as if serving “hormone-free” beef is special, when there’s more naturally occurring hormones in Chipotle tofu and beans than there are in any kind of beef. And Chipotle says organic is something to strive for, when organic food production uses manure as fertilizer — an easy way to get fecal bacteria contamination, such as E. coli, if it’s not done properly.
As for locally sourced beef, a lot of Chipotle steak comes from Australia. That gives new meaning to “local” farm suppliers.
Chipotle should serve as a lesson to other businesses about allowing marketing to get ahead of the ability to deliver. Chipotle’s brand was built on high-and-mighty — but vapid — terms like “sustainable,” “responsibly raised,” “with integrity.” Throw in local, organic and GMO-free, and you’ve got more buzzwords than you know what to do with.
Chipotle became the darling of the progressive foodies — people who apply an ideology to food. These people tend to dismiss modern technology (such as genetically improved crops) in favor of organic agriculture. They also have an anti-corporation streak.
They could overlook the fact that Chipotle was a big business since the company said the right things — namely, that big farming operations were bad. Through misleading videos and ads, Chipotle crafted a narrative that conventional food production is scary, industrial and bad. One video, “The Scarecrow,” racked up 15 million views.
In short, Chipotle puts style over substance.
Now, the burrito chain has been left trying to make up ground after losing customer trust. In other words, what truly isn’t sustainable is Chipotle’s story about its food.
Sourcing food from across the world isn’t a bad thing at all. The mainstream food system that food progressives loathe is quite good at affordably feeding us. And despite the scare campaigns about “big agriculture,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 97 percent of farms in the United States are family-owned.
Chipotle indulged a fantasy. Progressives now know the reality of sensible food production for a hungry world.
• Richard Berman is president of Berman and Co., a Washington public affairs firm.
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