Chipotle Increasing Food Safety Efforts

Same-store sales for Chipotle were down 26.1 percent in February, but the company did show signs of growth during the month. The February metric was an improvement over the same-store sales decline of 36.4 percent in January.

The Denver-based chain saw multiple foodborne illness outbreaks across its stores over the last six months, but it is starting to see some recovery, highlighted by the improved same-store-store sales decline in February.

Chipotle recently announced it hard hired Kansas State University meat-science professor James Marsden as its new executive director of food safety. There were reports that Chipotle was scaling back some of its food-safety changes, but the company denied those claims, according to FastCasual.com.

"Over the last few months, we have implemented a number of programs and procedures to enhance food safety — including prep of some ingredients in central kitchens, high resolution testing of ingredients, and procedural changes in our restaurants. Any changes we may make to our initial plans will be to strengthen what we are doing,” Chipotle Communications Director Chris Arnold said.