As mighty as a big restaurant chain might be, history has shown it can be flattened by a microscopic organism running amok. A fatal outbreak of E. coli bacteria almost destroyed Jack in the Box in the early '90s. An axis of E. coli, salmonella and norovirus drove away the legions of adoring fans who’d turned Chipotle Mexican Grill into last decade’s stellar restaurant success. All of a sudden, the emperor looked as if it wasn’t wearing clothes.
Dimmer in memory are the outbreak that sealed Chi-Chi’s demise and the deadly E. coli contamination that knocked Sizzler into a debilitating wobble.
Now comes what could be another whopper of a blow to a big brand, the suspected contamination of McDonald’s mega-popular Quarter Pounder. As of Wednesday morning, 49 instances of E. coli poisoning had been traced to the sandwich, as had one fatality. Typically in an outbreak, the victim count rises exponentially as individuals realize the bout of flu they suffered weeks beforehand might have actually been the result of the food contamination they just learned about from the news.
McDonald’s has pulled Quarter Pounders from restaurants in 12 states and says it is fully engaged in two investigations, the federal government’s and its own, to pinpoint the E. coli carrier. Science is pointing to slivered onions as the likely culprit. The burger topping isn’t cooked, and restaurants suspected of serving a contaminated sandwich all used the same onion supplier.
Investigators from the three federal agencies that guard against food contaminations haven’t ruled out ground beef as the bacteria’s carrier, but logic suggests the meat couldn’t have been the bacteria’s hideout. For one thing, McDonald’s uses a variety of vendors for its beef, meaning the E. coli somehow got into the grinders of multiple processors.
Plus, McDonald’s mandates that the burgers be heated to 175 degrees, and E. coli can’t survive a temperature of 160 degrees. Even if a grill’s calibration was off by a few degrees, the bacteria’s chances of survival were slim.
Then again, Quarter Pounders are the only McDonald’s sandwiches made with unfrozen beef, and freezing prevents a pathogen from proliferating and turning a patty into a poison pill. That protection wasn’t in place.
And E. coli has never before been traced to onions, as McDonald’s itself has noted.
Still, it notes that science has led the nation’s three key food-safety watchdogs—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food & Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—to the same suspicions about onions.
The connection of the outbreak to an ingredient is what differentiates the situation from the five separate food-safety contaminations that sickened a total of 1,100 Chipotle customers across the nation from 2015 to 2018. Government investigations at the time revealed the threat stemmed not from one or several ingredients but from a failure of restaurant-level employees to follow standard food-safety protocols. The danger was hiked by corporate management’s lax enforcement of the measures.
Because of that culpability, the chain was prosecuted by federal authorities. It agreed to resolve the issue by paying a $25 million fine—the largest penalty ever levied for a food-safety lapse—and agreeing to completely overhaul food-safety operating procedures.
Same-store sales fell by more than 20%, and the crisis was the undoing of the brand’s leadership. They came across as arrogant jerks who regarded food safety as something beneath them. Famously, founder and then-co-CEO Steve Ells went on the Today Show to assure Americans that Chipotle’s food was safer than the fare of any other chain in the business. Later that same day, health officials shut down two Chipotle units in the Seattle area because of food safety concerns.
I can personally attest to the arrogance Chipotle showed at the time. One of the headline-grabbing outbreaks was the rapid infection of 80 Boston College students with norovirus. All had eaten or had a connection to a Chipotle near the campus. It happened on a weekend, after a basketball game.
I managed to reach the chain’s spokesman for the brand’s account of what had happened in Boston. He clearly resented being bothered and belittled the whole thing. I half-expected his comment for attribution would be, “Let them eat cake.”
McDonald’s representatives are quick to point out there’s no suspicion customers were sickened because of lapses in food-safety protocols or the mishandling of food in the kitchen. Had there been, they stressed, restaurants would have been immediately shut down.
The company hasn’t revealed how Tuesday’s announcement of the E. coli contamination is affecting business. But the unavailability of Quarter Pounders in 12 states will undoubtedly take a financial toll. In explaining why a safety alert wasn’t issued until Oct. 22 for an outbreak that started Sept. 27, a spokesperson said 1 million of the sandwiches were sold during that stretch. Spotting a pattern in a volume like that and tracing the suspect burgers back to their restaurant of origin was an enormous undertaking.
Investors aren’t convinced the crisis is in hand. McDonald’s stock price fell early Wednesday by 5.2%, or $16.46 per share.