chipotle log

It’s a little late for a 2007 wrap up post, but I’m doing it anyway. With almost 90,000 pageviews from 40,000 people, 2007 was the quite a busy year for Chipotlog.com.

What were your favorite posts on this site from 2007?

Based on popularity ranking (and in order) they are:

1. When Chipotle.com had to take theirs offline, the scan of Chipotle Nutrition Information became a popular page.
2. The Barbacoa Recipe (which has since been determined to be from elsewhere…) is a perennial favorite
3. Everything you need to know about Chipotle Franchises, while a bit of a sarcastic title, was a hit with entrepreneurs while…
4. CMG Stock - Profitable way to Franchise Chipotle is a more practical tip for the Peter Lynch “Invest in what you know” crowd.
5. The interview with the Chipotle (rock star) Employee proved quite popular - perhaps due to people interested in life as an employee of the fine chain.
6. And finally, www.chipotle.com site review has proven popular among the folks interested in their website and some possible ideas for improvement

I’ve also added a new feature allowing people to vote on articles. That way I’ll be able to base the “best” articles on visitor votes instead of based upon just popularity.

Some recent problems in Chipotle-land:

The Food Poisoning Law Blog is reporting (and, in my opinion, trying to build up clients) on a potential Hepatitis A outbreak at a Chipotle in La Mesa, California.

That comes right on the heels of the “gastrointestinal illness” at the Kent State, Ohio, Chipotle location.

Which comes right on the heals of all the press coverage when Chipotle teamed up with polyface farms.

So…yikes? Is this just bad luck/timing and a natural occurrence when you run over 600 restaurants? Is this a sign of dropping quality as the chain expands so quickly?

NOTE: This is a followup to my earlier post about a personal tour of destination evans. The tour happened back in early October of 2007.

The Chief and the Photo

On the wall of the original chipotle (and many, if not all the other restaurants) is "The Chief". You could make up all sorts of ideas about how he guards over the quality of the food, or the Food with Integrity program or what have you. The bottom line is, that it's more of the cool maya-industrial art and now, much like the store is "Destination Evans" the chief gets to have his own name - at least as far as my tour guide Dave Hawkins is concerned.

Most Chipotle's have a photo of "Chipotle #1" on the wall. At Destination Evans itself they have photos on the walls, but the photo of their own location is from when it was a Dolly Madison restaurant. I need to double check the situation, but while I've heard that this is the only location that doesn't have a photo of "Destination Evans" on the wall I think there are others.

You can see the chief on the wall in the somerville chipotle which I visited recently.

Guacamole seasons

I’m currently in the middle of reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma and learning all about Polyface Farms and really loving their goals and the way they run their business. Then, I check my feed reader and see several new stories pop up - from the titles alone I was pretty excited:

• Chipotle Partners With Polyface For Sustainable Burritos
• One Polyface Burrito, Please
• Chipotle & Joel Salatin team up
• Chipotle and Polyface Farm
• In Trial Run, Chipotle Heads to the Farm

Wow. That’s a lot of great coverage for the new partnership (and both companies and their goals) including the obvious major coverage from the Washington Post. I won’t repeat the news that’s been posted by these folks other than to say if you like Chipotle for their Food With Integrity program, this seems like yet another great step down that road.

Now…to see about visiting that Chipotle location so that I can compare the carnitas at that location to the recipe I’m used to from the rest of the stores.

Food with Integrity Reading List (Media List)

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle about “fan sites” on the Chipotle Wikipedia page. Some people think they don’t belong there, some do. Well, here’s an alternate solution. Forget wikipedia. Let’s have an alternate list of all the great fan sites and tools that exist for people.

General Chipotle Fan Sites

The first Chipotle Fan Site I know of was Chipotle Lovers.com. This was a project by a few college fans who loved Chipotle. Sadly, it appears that when they left college their interest in the site waned. The forum has returned errors for a few years now. It does have a great Potle Pics section and List of locations.

The ChipotleFan.com site is another great resource. I really like their burrito generator and their blog is getting off the ground with some great posts.

And, of course, this site

Chipotle Diet Blogs

The original Chipotle Dieter (as far as I know) was Justin Hall who has expanded beyond just dieting into cost and environment saving ideas. He’s also a Master Burrito Ambassador

This might be my new favorite combo. The pepper on the carnitas in combination with the other flavors is so delicious. Also, not so many beans and rice to weigh me down. This was a brand new receipt phrase for me, which is always fun.

I got some nice photos of this location with my new camera. Mmmm...gadgets.

Update: The survey is now closed since he got as many responses as he needed. I’ll post back with analysis when I get the data.

Obviously you know what I think about chipotle. It’s all here on this blog. But what do you think about Chipotle?

Matt Ragas, from the University of Florida, is doing some research about Chipotle Mexican Grill. He wants understand Chipotle’s draw to customers and, as a part of that, is looking for your input on what you like about Chipotle.

His 14 question survey takes just a few minutes.

Much like this blog, Matt is not affiliated with Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. He’s doing this for academic purposes and will keep your answers strictly secret. Matt will share the final results with chipotlog in the future and assuming there’s some insightful stuff in there I’ll be sharing the results.

So, go to it - let him know what you think!