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)

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!

More on Chipotle marketing and business operations based on coverage from the Wall Street Journal.

My favorite bit of quotes:

Chipotle Mexican Grill has arguably become the country’s most successful fast-food chain in recent years by rejecting almost every major technique on which the industry was built. Not only does it not show the product, it doesn’t advertise on television. It doesn’t franchise. It has some of the highest ingredient costs in the industry. And its executives aren’t especially concerned that customers wait as long as 10 minutes in lines that routinely stretch out the door.

That’s classic “disruptive technology”. Most executives at “QSR” (quick serve restaurants) would have ignored Chipotle in 1993 dismissing it as too slow, too expensive, tiny margins and perhaps they still do today. Now it is a major competitor that Wendy’s and Jack In the Box (Baja Fresh and QDoba respectively) are trying—and failing—to copy.

Another interesting statistic:

The chain has videotaped as many as 50 people walking away from a single location in one hour because they weren’t willing to wait.

Given that they serve 100 people per hour during peak times, that is a real problem: a 50% decrease in sales during that time. I can only guess this is what has lead to chipotle delivery.

I wrote about chipotle’s sour cream sans rbgh a while ago. Now according to food and water watch their whole menu will be RGBH free in the near future.

Interesting times.

I also heard an ad from WalMart today saying that their chicken was antibiotic free. How is that the case? What’s going on there?

Last week Chipotle had major canned food drives at many of their stores. It wasn't at 100% of the stores, but it was at a lot of them. This was hugely beneficial to their public image and also brought in lots of new people who had never tried Chipotle before. I'll bet that this will make a huge impact in same store sales starting in June.

Chipotle Free Burrito Coverage Online

From other blogs - Katies first post about Colorado included this nice tidbit:

2) chipotle: there are 7 within 10 miles of my house. the other day i waited over an hour in line with a can of green beans in hand....all for a glorious free burrito (and to make a donation). nothing tastes better than free chipotle.

I've read similar reports on lots of other sites. personally my free chipotle burrito that day didn't take very long in line to receive, but I went at 11:20.

Other folks were not so lucky - microgirl writes of her tale

Last Tuesday, Chipotle was giving away free burritos if you brought in canned goods. ellipsesbandit and I made plans to go get free food, but the line was loooong. We said, "to hell with that," and went to Wendy's. Later that night, the guys went up to Chipotle to get free food, and they offered to get me a burrito . I said if they could that would be great, but if not that was okay too. Just before I went to bed, I find a coupon on my desk for a free burrito. The restaurant ran out of food, and ended up giving coupons. The guys each got two ('cause they drove to different places) and Brad gave one of his to me.

The IPRA - Parks and Recreation News source has a post about chipotle sponsoring parks in Naperville.

In partnership with the Naperville Park District, Chipotle will hide 30 giant faux burritos in high-traffic community parks, near trails, and around sports complexes, and from June 8 until June 30, the hunt will be on. The individuals who find the shiny silver treasures will be rewarded with a plentiful bounty: free Chipotle food for a year.

Oh man do I want that. But 52 cards for free burritos - that wouldn’t last me 6 months much less a year.

Chipotle’s Marketing System

As I’ve discussed previously, Chipotle marketing is awesome! This is just another example in that. They’ve done a really fun thing that gets folks out in the park and associates fun times with both healthy living (parks and trails and such) and the chipotle brand. Well done, folks.

and in true chipotle understated funny style check out the back of their “old” business card. this is just plain funny.