Chipotle Tumbles: "Supergirl" Actor Says He "Almost Died" After Eating At Burrito Chain

Chipotle stock tumbled on Monday on renewed food quality concerns after “Supergirl” actor Jeremy Jordan blamed the burrito chain for making him severely sick. The actor, who plays Winn Schott the show, posted an Instagram story on Thursday from his hospital bed, saying that “the food did not agree with me and I almost died,” according to People.

“I know I’ve advocated for them in the past, but they’re terrible,” says Jordan, who looks fairly pale laying in a hospital bed and showing viewers the IV in his arm.

“I, as you can see, am in the hospital and I have fluids in my arm because the food did not agree with me and I almost died.... I just want to thank my wife for being amazing and talking me off the ledge when I was on the phone about to die and Chris Wood for holding my hair back metaphorically,” he says. “I love all of you; thank you so much. It’s been a night.”

According to People, Jordan, 32, who was set to perform at a ‘salute to Broadway’ concert in Houston on Friday, says he hopes he is okay to go through with the show and has yet to update fans on his current status.

CMG shares fell as much as 4.4% in early trading on Monday, extending what has been a painful rout this year. Two years ago,

The incident will likely renew concerns about food safety at Chipotle, which has struggled to bounce back from an E. coli crisis in 2015 that sickened tens of customers.  The company had begun to restore its reputation in the past year, but a norovirus incident in Virginia and a viral video of mice at a Dallas location sparked a fresh round of negative headlines.

Chipotle also suffered a data breach earlier this year, an incident that hurt its earnings and contributed to another stock slump. This year’s hurricanes rocked Chipotle as well: It had 425 restaurants in the direct path of the storms.

Concerns about Jordan"s complaint going viral, Chipotle responded to the actor"s claims with the following statement to People:

“We are sorry to hear that Jeremy is sick and have attempted to get in touch with him directly regarding where and when he ate so we can look into this. We take all claims seriously, but at this time we can’t confirm any link to Chipotle. We are always committed to making things right for our guests and will do the same for Jeremy when we are able to reach him.”

If the stock price reaction to the denial is any indication, Chipotle will have to try much harder...

Rats Fall From Ceiling At Dallas Chipotle In "Rare And Isolated Incident"

A day after Chipotle Mexican Grill faced an outbreak of norovirus at a Chipotle restaurant in Virginia, the company’s PR team is dealing with yet another embarrassing public-health incident. A Dallas TV station reported that, at one local Chipotle restaurant, customers’ lunch was ruined when several rodents reportedly fell from the ceiling and landed inside the dining area.

Footage of the incident - as one angry customer remarked - is enough to put one off from eating at the chain indefinitely:

Customers said the rats appeared to materialize from out of nowhere:

“If we would have been sitting at the table next to that it definitely would have fell on top of our food because it was literally right there,” Daniela Ornelas, of Dallas, told NBC DFW, adding that she and her boyfriend were eating during the lunch rush at the restaurant.

“I just kept wondering what it was, and I kept looking around until I looked at the floor, and I saw three rats, and I ran,” Ornelas said.

Chipotle shares plunged more than 6% on Tuesday after multiple customers reported getting sick after eating at a restaurant in Sterling, Virginia. Customers reported symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, dehydration, and nausea to the website iwaspoisoned.com, alerting Business Insider, which confirmed the norovirus outbreak with the company. At least 13 customers fell ill after eating at the Virginia Chipotle between July 14 and 15.

The outbreak echoed a public relations nightmare from two years ago, when reports of diners getting sick at Chipotle restaurants around the country first began to emerge. The company was found responsible for cases of salmonella, norovirus and e. coli, and saw its same-store sales decline precipitously. Chipotle’s shares shed nearly 50% of their value in the aftermath, a decline from which they have never recovered.

A Chipotle spokesperson issued a statement to NBC DFW Wednesday to explain how the rodents ended up in the dining room, adding that it was an “extremely isolated and rare.”

“We learned yesterday that mice got into a restaurant," the statement read, "and we immediately contacted professionals who identified a small structural gap in the building as the likely access point. We’re having it repaired. Additionally, we reached out to the customer to make things right. This is an extremely isolated and rare incident and certainly not anything we’d ever want our customers to encounter.”

Still, it looks like Chipotle is going to lose a few customers over this one.

"Ornelas said she was happy with how the employees handled the situation, but would likely not return to Chipotle"s West End location."

However, the outbreak hasn’t scared off devoted Chipotle customers like Bill Ackman. Ackman sent his first-ever tweet on Wednesday, featuring a photo of him smiling inside a Chipotle restaurant, with a caption that read “eating our own cooking @ChipotleTweets.” Ackman"s fund, Pershing Square Capital Group, owns 10% of Chipotle.

Eating our own cooking @ChipotleTweets and making my own mix at https://t.co/CiNtycYWhP pic.twitter.com/rYad7uKuI3

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman1) July 19, 2017

Now, imagine what would happen to the stock price if Ackman got salmonella?
 

Tacos Vs Burritos Index: The Great Divide In Mexican-American Cuisine

Via Priceonomics.com,

Americans love the genre of cuisine generally known as "Mexican food". The cuisine of our southern neighbor has been ingrained in our culture since the early 20th century. In many respects, it has evolved beyond its origins to become something uniquely American (think Tex-Mex and giant breakfast burritos).

You can find it anywhere, from just across the border to the farthest corners of our northern states. This presents a great opportunity to explore which parts of the country offer the most for Mexican food aficionados. Which city has the most Mexican restaurants? Do some regions of the United States exhibit any preferences for tacos versus burritos?

We analyzed restaurant menu data from Priceonomics customer Datafiniti to see who serves Mexican food and what kind of food that actually is. With the ability to filter for cuisine as well as restaurants with available menu data, we easily found several thousand records to start our investigation. From this initial dataset, we extracted over 100,000 menu items and searched for specific instances of tacos or burritos. Finally, by grouping this data geographically, we were able to compare cities.

Ultimately we found that most major cities (e.g. NYC), as well as cities in the Southwest and California, had the most Mexican restaurants to offer. Cities in Texas, Colorado, and California reign supreme for the most restaurants per capita. In the taco vs. burrito debate, the overall skew of menu items was 56% tacos and 44% burritos nationally. Most notably, cities in Texas offered mostly taco options, while cities in the middle of the country and Northwest offered more burrito options.

***

To start our analysis, we need to determine which cities have the most Mexican restaurants. Below, we’ve charted the top 25 cities.

Data source: Datafiniti

As we can see, the largest cities in the country dominate this list. Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles hold the top three positions. Cities on the list are from all over the country, though there is an abundance of cities from the Southwest (especially Texas).

This list is a bit disingenuous though, and I’ll explain why. As we said at the beginning, we are looking for the cities with the most Mexican food - when I hear that, I think of independently owned restaurants or smaller chains. This list above includes many fast food and fast casual chains that many taco/burrito enthusiasts would not consider authentic, for example, Taco Bell. 

We’ve plotted which restaurants have the most locations in our dataset to illustrate that point.

Data source: Datafiniti

Taco Bell makes up nearly 20% of the listings, and in total, the top ten (which includes other popular chains like Chipotle) make up 28% of listings. As we continue our analysis of Mexican restaurants, we will want to remove these kinds of places. With the help of additional secondary research, we’ve identified 20+ restaurants that would be considered fast food chains and ultimately will exclude from the analysis. In total, these make up about 33% of our initial records. To clarify, we’ll still include smaller local chains in the dataset.

Now that we’re only looking at authentic restaurants, we’ll determine the restaurant most listings by city.

Data source: Datafiniti

The rankings are very similar to our previous analysis, but we can see that some cities have jumped up in our rankings. Houston moved up to third while San Francisco, Tucson, and Washington D.C. also jumped up several positions. Cities such as Portland and Phoenix dropped.

Now we want to investigate the ratio between tacos and burritos for each of these cities. We will show which cities you should visit if you’re a fan of either option. We’ve arranged our results from most taco percentage to least. Across the country, the average breakdown is 56% tacos to 44% burritos, and we’ve added highlighting to show when a city skews towards a particular entree. 

Data source: Datafiniti

San Antonio and Dallas, have the greatest percentage of tacos at 84%. Indianapolis has the greatest percentage of burritos at 62%. In general, more cities on our list lean towards tacos. Another interesting trend is that all cities in Southwest, from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, are taco cities. Burrito cities are mostly from the Midwest and West. California has cities in both categories. It appears that SoCal prefers tacos (LA and San Diego), while NorCal prefers burritos (San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose).

Our previous lists were made up of cities with large populations, which would naturally have a greater number restaurants of all kinds. By accounting for population and calculating the number of Mexican restaurants per person, we can highlight some smaller cities with a lot of Mexican cuisine to offer.

Data source: Datafiniti

Similar to our first analysis, we will list the 25 cities with the most Mexican restaurants, but this time we will look at restaurants per 10,000 residents. You should also note that we are still excluding the fast food and fast casual restaurants that we removed earlier.

Humble, TX has a staggering 7.2 restaurants per 10,000 residents. That is almost about 1.5 times that of the second place city, Littleton, CO with 4.8. In this analysis, we see a lot more small cities from the Southwest and California. Larger cities including Tucson, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Denver still made the cut though.

Now how will these cities compare when looking at their offerings for tacos and burritos? Again we will look at the ratio of taco and burrito options, ordering our list from most taco percentage to least.

Data source: Datafiniti

These cities seem to lean more towards a particular dish than the larger cities. McAllen, TX is clearly a taco town with 93% tacos. Berkeley, CA is king of the burritos with 68% burritos. Overall, we see that there are a lot more places that skew towards burritos than our previous list. Colorado, in particular, appears to have several smaller cities that have many burrito options. It also appears the trend for cities in Texas to prefer tacos holds true. 

***

Ultimately, we found that if you love Mexican food, you can really find a lot of options anywhere in the country, especially in bigger cities that can provide you with plenty of options. If you’re looking for tacos, head to Texas, southern California, or other Southwestern states. Burrito enthusiasts can find what they are looking for in the rest of the country, especially northern California and Colorado.

Restaurants To Eliminate More Waiters In Response To Minimum Wage Hike

Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Colorado was among the four states where voters approved a minimum wage hike in November. Among the specific provisions for the new wage hike was the stipulation that tipped workers — such as waiters who receive tips and are paid below the standard minimum wage — will receive a mandated wage hike of 99 cents.

Naturally, this will lead to an increase in costs for restaurant owners who will then seek to raise prices and/or reduce costs. KDVR in Denver reports: 

Kanatzer owns The Airplane Restaurant in Colorado Springs and said he has already increased his kids menu prices. ...

"I increased it a dollar — my kids menu prices went from $4.99 to $5.99," Kanatzer said.

Raising prices can only go so far, however. Contrary to what many non-economists seem to believe, it is not possible to simply "pass on the extra cost to customers." As any economics-major undergraduate knows, it is only possible to pass on a portion of the increased cost to the customer because higher prices and competition from other firms will lead to fewer sales if the owner simply attempts to "pass on the cost." And even if all restaurants are subject to the same wage hike, there are always substitutes in the form of take-out and other types of dining.

Specifically, in response to the forced wage hike we can expect to see more food-service business go the way of so-called "fast casual dining" which include brands such as Chipotle and Noodles and Company. These are restaurants where patrons order food at the counter, and then take their food to their tables themselves. These places often offer alcoholic beverages and higher-quality food than "fast food" places such as McDonalds, and somewhat approximate the "casual dining" experience at lower cost thanks to the elimination of servers. 

Thus, in order to control costs, restaurants that have in past hired wait staff will become more like fast casual restaurants. The KDVR report suggests exactly this, in fact:

Kanatzer estimates most restaurants will adjust prices and change staffing levels as a result, which could mean fewer servers and longer waits.

"I"ve got a friend who has a restaurant and he"s going to do counter service from 2-4 (p.m.) so he"s not going to have a server at all," Kanatzer said.

...Kanatzer suspects more restaurants will install kiosks at tables in the hopes technology might eliminate the need for most servers.

So, we should expect restaurants to hire fewer servers and move toward more counter service and use of technology to replace servers. 

Some waiters have become concerned that the new wage hike is endangering their jobs. They should be concerned:

Even some servers who are recipients of the pay raise fear possible impacts.

"I"m more worried about [the restaurant owner] and how it might affect him — not how it impacts me," said Lisa Bowen, a server at The Airplane Restaurant.

The effect on workers will be that many of them will need to move to lower-wage jobs due to there being fewer waiter opportunities. Many people who are now waiters and potential waiters will have to take jobs as cashiers and other workers at fast food and fast casual restaurants instead of waiting tables. As anyone who has worked in food service knows, these sorts of jobs often pay far less per hour than traditional waiter jobs. So, the minimum wage hike will mean an actual pay cut for many people who could have made more as waiters, were it not for the minimum wage hike. 

Moreover, it means that in the future, waiter positions that might have existed in the absence of the minimum wage hike will never exist. More restaurants that rely on a large wait staff will change their model, close down, or never be opened at all, further cutting the job opportunities for workers who would benefit from working as waiters. 

However, these unseen positions that never came into existence will not show up in any unemployment data, and thus the proponents of minimum wage hikes will claim that higher wages to not lead to less employment. The media will interview the lucky waiters who managed to keep their jobs and wait tables in an environment of higher prices — and higher tips. Competition for these remaining jobs will become more fierce meaning lower-skill waiters will find themselves locked out of waiter jobs. In the end, proponents of minimum wage hikes will declare victory and ignore all the unseen consequences imposed on the most vulnerable, unskilled, and marginal members of the workforce.