Chipotle: Time Out, Game On

Editor's Note: Following is an interesting take on the Chipotle situation by Kevin Coupe, MorningNewsBeat.com.

Today (Monday, Feb. 8) is the day for Chipotle. The Mexican food chain will keep its stores closed today until 3 pm EST as it holds a company-wide meeting. That meeting will allow company leadership to both thank employees for enduring the crises that have beset the company, leading to empty parking lots and declining sales, and to explain one last time the new food safety protocols that it hopes will prevent any new occurrences.

The company, which always has focused both on local sourcing and "food with integrity" as its differential advantages, now has to change its approach and move to some degree to more centralized sourcing and control as a way of making sure that new problems do not emerge. Its entire competitive premise has been that local sourcing results in "food with integrity," but recent events suggest that this may be true ... and now it has to find a new path to the same destination. That's not always easy.

Read the full article.