As Chipotle Mexican Grill tries to recover from a series of contaminations that have caused some customers and investors to flee, it said it would shut down all of its stores for several hours Feb. 8 to hold food safety meetings with employees.“We are hosting a national team meeting to thank our employees for their hard work through this difficult time, discuss some of the food safety changes we are implementing, and answer questions from employees,” Chris Arnold, a Chipotle spokesman, said in an email.The stores will open at 3 p.m., later than the usual start time of about 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., skipping the lunch hour rush on a Monday.The restaurant chain, which has more than 2,000 locations and has created an identity based largely on using locally grown, fresh ingredients, has been contending with a series of E. coli outbreaks. Five customers in Seattle became ill with the bacterium in July, and there have been at least six outbreaks in the past six months.Chipotle indicated last week that the federal authorities were pursuing a criminal case. The company said it received a grand jury subpoena related to a norovirus outbreak that sickened 234 people in Simi Valley, California, in August. Chipotle has said that outbreak and another in Boston that affected at least 136 customers in December were caused by sick employees who ignored company polices that prohibited them from working.More than 500 people are estimated to have become ill after eating in Chipotle restaurants in the second half of 2015.The company said in December that it may never know what caused an E. coli outbreak in November linked to two restaurants in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Chipotle’s same-store sales dropped by 14.6 percent in the last quarter.© 2016 New York Times News Service