Chipotle: Rodents Falling From Restaurant Ceiling Is “Isolated And Rare Incident”

If there’s one thing Chipotle doesn’t need as it continues to recover from its food-borne illness woes — including a new incident of norovirus at one restaurant — it’s reports of rodents raining down on customers from the ceiling. Uh, about that…

Patrons of a Dallas Chipotle restaurant say they were put off their food when mice started falling out of the ceiling on Tuesday, NBC-DFW reports.

Of course everyone already has their phones out when they’re eating — how else are you going to show your social media friends what you’re eating? — so diners started filming the rodent rain: Critters skittering around on the floor, scaling walls, and generally grossing people out.

“I just kept wondering what it was, and I kept looking around until I looked at the floor, and I saw three rats, and I ran,” one customer told the news station. She said if she had been sitting at the table next to hers, one of the rodents would’ve fallen onto her food.

Meanwhile, some customers kept eating, while employees ran around scooping up the mice.

Chipotle acknowledges that mice got into a restaurant, and told NBC-DFW that professional rodent folks had discovered a gap in the building that may have allowed them to get in, which is now being repaired.

“Additionally, we reached out to the customer to make things right,” a spokesperson said. “This is an extremely isolated and rare incident and certainly not anything we’d ever want our customers to encounter,”

As for the formerly frequent customer who spoke to NBC-DFW, she says the whole thing has put her off eating at the restaurant.

“I will never come back here,” she said.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist