Chipotle Made a Profit in a Year Marked by Food-Safety Scandals

Just a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that its investigation into Chipotle’s E. coli outbreak had concluded, the chain was provided with another opportunity to announce some bad news and at the same time make the case that its era defined by bad news was finally over. Its quarterly sales were announced on Tuesday, and as expected, things did not look great in the final months of 2015, when Chipotle was regularly, increasingly dogged by reports of sickened customers, lawsuits, and news that generally doesn’t make people hungry for burritos.

“We are pleased to have this behind us and can place our full energies to implementing our enhanced food safety plan that will establish Chipotle as an industry leader in food safety,” CEO Steve Ells said in a statement.

It still might not be so simple as acknowledging that sales dipped by 14.6 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2014—the worst slump the company has experienced since going public in 2006—and moving on. While the chain turned a profit last year, albeit a small one, it also announced on Tuesday that the federal criminal investigation into the California norovirus outbreak has been expanded. A second subpoena from the feds requires the company to hand over all food-safety-related documents—not just those related to the Simi Valley outbreak, the focus of the initial subpoena—going back to the beginning of 2013.

What will come of that investigation—and why the feds are looking into the outbreaks in the first place, which mystified food-safety attorney Bill Marler—remains to be seen, but it's safe to assume that Ells will look forward to putting that, as well as the numerous class-action lawsuits the chain is facing, behind it as well.

Even with the outbreaks and the legal and media scrutiny that has followed, Chipotle eked out a 0.2 percent increase in comparable restaurant sales over the year and ended 2014 with $4.5 billion in revenue, an increase of nearly 10 percent. While that’s nothing compared with the 27.8 percent increase in revenue Chipotle enjoyed in 2014, it’s a positive number nonetheless.