Chipotle has shut down the Dallas restaurant where a guest shot the now-viral video of rodents crawling on the floor. Spokeswoman Quinn Kelsey told Bloomberg the company wants to assess the construction of the building, which is part of a 100-year-old structure in the city’s West End District.
The chain is conducting a review of the site, Kelsey said. Chipotle blamed the incident on a structural gap in the building. In July, a customer told NBC DFW that rodents fell from the ceiling.
Chipotle released this statement to the station after the event:
“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.”
Kelly said the location will reopen once it meets Chipotle’s standards for operation. According to the Bloomberg article, employees were given the option to relocate to nearby stores during the process.
Shares dropped more than 2 percent in midday trading Thursday to $326.20, which represented Chipotle’s lowest intraday price since April 2013.
The rodent incident, notable for the widely shared video, came just days after news broke of a Sterling, Virginia, Chipotle closing its doors to curb a norovirus outbreak. More than 130 customers reported falling sick at the location. After two days of being sanitized, the location reopened, but some damage was undeniably done.
Shares slipped to a then-52-week low of $336.52 following and Chipotle addressed the issue extensively during its otherwise positive second-quarter earnings review. Same-store sales were up 8.1 percent year-over-year and revenue grew 17.1 percent to $1.17 billion. The company also announced an extensive queso pilot and briefly mentioned the arrival of its first drive thru.