Dallas Chipotle Restaurant Closes After Mice Spotting

A Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in downtown Dallas temporarily closed Tuesday after mice were spotted. The mice managed to crawl through a hole in the wall of the 100-year-old building.

The closure announcement comes on the heels of video footage of the rodent sighting went viral after a Chipotle customer posted it on Twitter. However, the announcement didn't emerge until three weeks after the incident.

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Quinn Kelsey, communications and public relations manager for Chipotle, issued a statement Thursday to International Business Times about the closing. Chipotle, which has over 2,200 locations, plans to investigate the construction of the building.

"We have temporarily closed the Chipotle restaurant in Dallas’ historic West End District at 208 North Market Street so we can continue to thoroughly assess the construction of this 100-year-old building," Kelsey told IBT. "Employees have been given the option to relocate to nearby Chipotle locations while our teams are evaluating the building.

"We regret any inconvenience and will reopen only when we are certain the building meets all Chipotle standards for operation."

According to the Dallas Morning News, management had removed the rodents from the restaurant. A crew of professional were also recruited to help repair the hole the rodents entered the Chipotle through.

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Twitter user Bahadir Koslei took to Twitter in July to share the footage, saying, "@ChipotleTweets checkout this video of your West End Dallas location. Alive rodents in your restaurant isn't how you do business. @CBS11." His friend also shared the video from the July sighting on Twitter, saying, "My friend @BahadirKoseli took this video at lunch today at Chipotle in Dallas (West End) @ChipotleTweets literally explain this please."

A representative of Chipotle responded to Koslei's friends' tweet, saying, "That's concerning. Please contact http://chipotle.com/email-us."

The video footage went viral the day after the post was published on Twitter. Mice in the video are seen moving past a table, crawling up a wall and a third was laying motionless on its side.

The Denver-based company, which was founded in 1993, has come under fire for health code issues, most notably for an E. coli outbreak in 2015.

After the outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans to investigate in a statement.

"The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with state and local officials are investigating two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections that have been linked to food served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states."

Chipotle reportedly closed 43 restaurants in Washington and Oregon after news broke of the initial outbreak.

A norovirus outbreak also plagued the fast food chain in July, which CNN reported that a sick employee was responsible for spreading the infection at a Virginia location.

Small Business Trends reported in July that the outbreak provided a "PR nightmare" that "is far from over."

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