WASHINGTON — A Chipotle franchise in Sterling, Va., temporarily closed Tuesday morning after receiving multiple reports from customers who said they got sick after eating at the restaurant.
The reports — which were collected on the crowd-sourced early-warning site “I Was Poisoned” –describe severe vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pains contracted in the hours after eating at a Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Chipotle’s stock immediately plummeted 6 percent, raising specters of the string of foodborne illness outbreaks that devastated the Denver-based chain in 2015. The restaurant suffered repeat outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and norovirus in a six-month period, forcing it to take the extraordinary step of temporarily closing more than 2,000 locations in February 2016 to conduct employee food-safety training.
Chipotle has spent the months since then attempting to convince fleeing customers that its food is safe.
In a statement, Chipotle’s executive director of food safety, Jim Marsden, said the company has notified local health officials to resolve the situation, and believed the store would reopen later Tuesday.
