Chipotle restaurants recently experienced a decline in sales because of an e coli outbreak in a couple of its restaurants. Stock went down and they were facing federal criminal investigation. Chipotle earned a lot of media from this, it was all over the news and people who were infected were a main source of word of mouth promotion – negative promotion. Although there is technically no negative publicity, Chipotle decided to use this opportunity to gain back many of the fans it had lost. Chipotle stated that every restaurant would close on February 8th during the day. During that time it had scheduled to have an entire employee meeting going over what had happened and applying new measures of health and safety for the food and its customers. Chipotle knew that many people would be upset about the closing so it came up with an incentive. During their lunch hour if a customer texted “raincheck” to a certain number they would receive a coupon for a free burrito. They turned a negative event into something useful to keep its fans happy.
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/chipotles-big-comeback-plan-is-free-burritos/
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