Chipotle CEOs Took Hefty Pay Cuts in Wake of Food Safety Disasters

As Chipotle tries to rebound from a months-long public health disaster, its stock — and its CEOs — are feeling the effects. Co-CEOs Steve Ells and Marty Moran had their 2015 salaries chopped nearly in half in conjunction with the fourth quarter plummet in Chipotle's sales, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Chipotle's stock has fallen 23 percent in the last year amid a series of food safety scares involving E. coli and norovirus (the latter of which reared its ugly head again just last week). Ells took home $13.8 million in 2015, while Moran earned $13.6 million, Nation's Restaurant News reported. By comparison, in 2014 the executives earned $28.9 million and $28.2 million, respectively.

Ells has promised the company would do all it could to rectify the damage done by these health scares and win back customer trust, including instituting new food safety guidelines. Chipotle's all-time high stock price is around $760, and it currently sits at $519. New measures the company has instituted will mean that any future stock-based awards given to employees will only be paid out once the stock price returns to $700 for 30 consecutive days — so the state of Chipotle executives' bank accounts will depend on exactly how successful that turnaround plan is.