(5MinNewsBreak.com) – The well-known fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle has recently reversed a bizarre decision affecting its staff’s meal choices, permitting them once more to include chicken in their personal meals.
This adjustment comes after Bloomberg revealed that employees had been instructed to refrain from choosing chicken as part of their meal options due to heightened demand from customers.
In a letter distributed last week to its workforce, the company initially directed employees to exclude chicken from their personal meals.
This step was deemed necessary to ensure adequate chicken supplies remained available to meet customer demand, Bloomberg reported, as cited by NewsNation.
According to the report, store managers were specifically instructed to avoid selecting chicken or Chicken al Pastor for their meals and were asked to encourage their teams to follow suit.
However, by Thursday, there was a shift in policy as announced by Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s Chief Corporate Affairs and Food Safety Officer.
“We are not experiencing outages of chicken in our restaurants. Last week we temporarily asked employees to select non-chicken options for their employee meals to maintain supply for our guests based on our strong sales, but employees are now free to select chicken in their meals as normal,” Schalow told the Associated Press.
The directive to avoid chicken had extended beyond the kitchen staff to include the corporate personnel at Chipotle’s offices.
These employees were also informed through internal advisories that chicken would not be an available option, particularly during the complimentary meals provided on Mondays, as per Bloomberg’s findings.
The temporary policy had caused some discontent among the staff. Employees expressed their dissatisfaction to Bloomberg, noting that some managers had even resorted to discarding the chicken meals of employees who did not comply during their lunch breaks.
Notably, this strict enforcement was reported by staff at the only unionized Chipotle location in the United States, situated in Michigan.
Moreover, during a recent quarterly earnings call, Chipotle’s executives underscored the success of their newly introduced Chicken al Pastor.
They highlighted it as one of the most sought-after additions to their menu. Supporting this claim, data from Placer.ai demonstrated a significant 10% increase in Chipotle visits during the first quarter, a figure that notably surpasses the 4% growth observed across the broader fast-casual restaurant industry.
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