why is chipotle considered popular?


Their burritos tastes like crap. It's bland as heck. I'm sure it's low in fat by the way it tastes.

It's not traditional mexican or even tex-mex. It's more like a wrap.

A burrito, a side of chips and salsa, and a drink would cost you 10 bucks. Too much for a fast food joint. They give you this little container of salsa, and then you have chips left over with no salsa.

Go to El Polo Loco or Baja Fresh. You'll get a full meal with drink included for 6 to 7 bucks. And you can go nuts on their free salsa bar.

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Because of the whole recent green sustainable movement. IMO, Chipotle is pretty much tex-mex, even with midwestern decor screaming it. Marketing the idea that they are using organic veggies and non-factory beef got people coming in, looking for a better fast-food choice. Frankly, the whole recession might have helped. Ever since the whole thing went down, everyone ran away from restaurants and started eating out in fast food. Over time people began to look for better choices--a restaurant quality meal in a fast food setting--and the whole fast-casual style restaurant was born, with Chipotle in the lead.

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Their food is actually relatively healthy. Some people take issue with the big portions but it is not bad for you. A burrito, chips and salsa and a drink from Chipotle is a massive amount of food. It may cost you $10 but you're getting your money's worth.

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No, it's not filling. First of all, most of the burrito is white rice. Not even Spanish or Mexican rice. All you taste is white rice.

It's made popular by liberal hippies who think they are good because they used naturally raised chickens and naturally raised pork.

Burrito only has a couple spoonfuls of meat with the white rice, so I can't really taste the difference.

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I had dinner last night with a friend who works outside of Boston. He has lunch at Chipotle a few times a week there and said 'it's average but expensive' (also said the place is not that clean). I asked him why he goes there if he's not thrilled with it, and he said they're the only fast food place on the street - when they opened a few years ago, many of the smaller mom+pop places closed because of the economy.

I'm assuming Chipotle's (which has sprung up around New England in the past two years) is taking advantage of the low rents NOW being offered in our troubled economy, while others are closing down and leaving vacant spaces.

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You do that realize you can tell them if you want more meat/less rice, right? They're making it right in front of you. I've been at some locations that go overboard with the rice and some that don't but it's not like Steve Ells is holding a gun to your head when you walk in the restaurant telling you that you have to get a 80% rice burrito. There are plenty of people who eat at the Chipotle locations near me who are not "liberal hippies." As I said, people like it because it's not bad for you. That's why it's popular. Sure you could get a better tasting burrito elsewhere. If all you're concerned about is taste then it's not for you.

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So it's like sushi...80% rice and 20% mystery?

Isn't Brown rice healthier and eco-responsible?

Respectfully,

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the tortilla alone is over 300 calories



It's a what? It's a scootboard, that's what it is!

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What, you work for Chipotle? You mean I can ask for 90% meat and 10% rice if I wanted to (without getting dirty looks), and the burrito will be the same size as before? Because I would certainly do so or maybe ask for 100% meat.

They make it front of you at Subway, too, and they charge you more if you want double meat.

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They make it front of you at Subway, too, and they charge you more if you want double meat.


EXACTLY. They are not going to modify their cost-effevtive product for you at 'no charge'. It's all about profit and cost control - as we learned last week.

"Thank You, St. Jude for prayers answered."









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Asking for double meat will cost you more but if you simply ask for "a little more meat" or say something like "make sure you put enough on", etc. they will do it for you. Most of their employees are just concerned with getting the order down the line as fast as possible and don't care about putting some extra meat on your burrito. I've done it plenty of times. And asking for less rice is obviously no problem.

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Finally someone on here says that Chipotle is horrible. I had it once and it tasted like a bad night out. I agree 1000% with the OP.

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Agreed, they have Chipotles where I live but we also have numerous authentic taquerias. Not all are good, mind you, but I never have to work very hard for the "real thing".

I feel bad for people who want to eat Mexican but can only choose this re-imagined stuff. This is just higher tier taco bell. I wouldn't mind it so much if they weren't associated with another culture, call Chipotle what it is...stuff in tortillas.

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I've been to Mountain View Chipotle, and literally 5min away is the famed burrito triangle with awesome places like La Bamba and La Costena. Yet Chipotle is full of yuppies and idiots who think its trendy to eat there, or somehow healthier.

The mind boggles.

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[deleted]

I guess I'm in the minority cuz I kinda like Chipotle. Initially I had no interest in going there even though several of my friends seemed to love it, because I'm really not a fan of Mexican food. But a friend took me after a while and it wasn't bad. I usually get the bowl, not the burrito.

It's probably because I'm not a Mexican food fan that I like Chipotle, since according to most people here it's really not even Mexican! Haha.

It also depends on the restaurant: We have two Chipotle's (small college town) and one of them is IMO, significantly better than the other, both in taste and in service. Not sure why that is.

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I like Chipotle and so does my 10-year-old. We just ate there yesterday, in fact. But clearly that just makes us tools. We should be out growing our own fresh-grown food in our back yard and forging it with our own hands in our authentic clay oven, if we want tex-mex.

I guess these are the same people who have a snot-filled conniption at the thought of drinking at Starbucks, because real coffee should come hand-picked from hawaii and be roasted in an oven and brewed with unicorn tears and blah blah blah, and oh what a bunch of yuppie wanna-be rubes the rest of us are for drinking anything less.

I'm looking forward to them now telling me clearly I'm a troll who works for both these companies because I don't buy their snobbery.

____
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They have chipotle's everywhere down here in the south. Never even heard of this restaurant before I moved here. I wasn't impressed.

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I laugh at all the morons complaining about yuppies in Chipotle trying to be trendy. Yeah, he built a nationwide business on yuppies wanting to feel good about being green. First off I doubt anyone who goes into a Chipotle even knows about where the food comes from. Yeah they did a bit of a push with Food Inc which they sponsored but like three thousand people saw that film nationwide and most thought it bizarre that Chipotle sponsored it, indicating that there's no pre-existing knowledge of any green stuff on Chipotle's part. Secondly, if green was a big selling point then you'd see lots of other green things as massive hits. I mean the Prius, for example, is doing OKAY, but it's not some blockbuster car. Indeed, the biggest stumbling block for people pushing alternative fuel cars is that they're just not that popular.

If by "trendy" you mean that people's friends and acqaintances ate there and so other people try it out then I'm sure that's true but guess what: that's how any business works. People try it out and like it and they mention it to their friends. But acting like it's "trendy" like people are forcing this stuff down their gullet cause they think it looks cool? Come on. You think people are really preening like "Ooh I'm so hip I ate at a counter service restaurant today." LOL, yeah right. In particular I find it funny when so many people in this thread are actually doing what they accuse Chipotle patrons of doing: trying to look hip. They're trying to look like they've got a superior culinary and cultural palate because they eat at "real" Mexican restaurants rather than a chain. If you want to see a real example of yuppies patronizing something in order to look hip you can look to that trend where people will patronize an independent establishment not because it has better objective quality but because they think that the fact that it's not some mass produced corporate product means that a) its better and b) they as consumers are more refined by patronizing it.

Why is it popular? Well as others have pointed out it's a fairly generous portion of food for a relatively cheap price. The food is pretty decent in quality. Compared to most fast food restaurants the quality of the ingredients is pretty high. And what none of you morons seem to get is that some of the stuff that you're criticizing Chipotle for is exactly why it's popular. People said that it's bland, well guess what that's part of the appeal. It's spicy enough to appeal to people who want some spice but not spicy enough to turn people off. They don't have an overly complicated taste to their burritos: meat, salsa, rice, beans, and choice of things like cheese, lettuce or guac. No crazy sauces or weird ingredients. And this means that the food is less adventuresome than you'll get some places but it also means it's more accessible. It's got enough going on that people can go in wanting something good tasting and walk away reasonably satisfied but people who don't want something incredibly spicy and crazy tasting will also be satisfied. This is generally the approach taken by succesful fast food restaurants. You have a limited menu of options in order to keep the cost of sourcing ingredients down and you produce a middle of the road product which is tasty enough to be attractive without being so embroidered in taste as to turn them off.





"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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There_Is_No_Sayid, you wrote all that (a literal commercial), and are you going to tell me you don't work for Chipotle? Are you Steve Ells, himself?

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No I don't work for them. Although I do like their food. I just got ticked off by the morons acting like it's some grand conspiracy against them to make Chipotle popular

"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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Everything you said actually supports the reason Chipotle is not well liked by people here. Its the definition of average - safe food, safe pricing, no risks, mass produced cookie cutter food and experience.

Yes, it may be the way to run a chain, but Mexican food is not exactly rare, and Chipotles success in areas where there's plenty of real authentic and tasty Mexican food is only because Americans are boring and unadventurous as a rule.

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I live in Kansas City, where there is a rather large Hispanic population. There are Mexican restaurants all over the place, all "authentic." Some of the ones lauded for their food are, I've found, the worst-tasting food experiences I could imagine. There is one Mexican restaurant I do frequent, and have, for the last 13 years. I will continue to do so.

But sometimes, I really want a carnitas burrito bowl with extra rice and extra cheese. It's popular because people like it; there, that answers the OP's question. WHY they like it should be left to the people on here who majored in sociology or psychology in college and are currently unemployed, thereby having plenty of time on their hands to contemplate the question. :D



"My devil danced with his demon, and the fiddler's tune is far from over."

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The "authentic" thing is such a laugh too. That's such a trendy thing. That you experience the "authentic" whatever.

"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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I think a Mexican restaurant owned and run by Mexicans who know their own cuisine would be considered authentic.



"My devil danced with his demon, and the fiddler's tune is far from over."

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Is it? I'm skeptical of claims of "authenticity" because there's just no good metric for doing so.

But I meant more that you had people upthread arguing that Chiptole was only popular because it was trendy. What's trendy for certain people is trying to demonstrate their sophistication through "authenticity".


"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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Gotcha, and agreed.



"My devil danced with his demon, and the fiddler's tune is far from over."

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Umm that's exactly what I said. That's how you have a mass chain. And that's the APPEAL of a mass chain. You can walk into any Chipotle in the country and know basically what you're going to get. OTOH if you go to some local Mexican restaurant it might be phenomenal or it might give you botulism.


"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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[deleted]

Yep. Compared to its parent company McDonalds, Chipotle is fantastic. They've got consistency as well. Also, being part of a chain they can usually afford to set their store up in high traffic areas as opposed to an independent restaurant who will have to put it where they can afford to rent space. That gives Chipotle a foot traffic advantage.


"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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[deleted]

I never understood the big deal about Chipotle either. I've been there twice, the first time the food was bland as you said and I thought maybe it was just a bad order. Second time I went it was bland again, no flavor. So I stopped going.

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Just went to Chipotle (at friend's request) a few days ago. Didn't want a heavy burrito so opted for the tacos. Was kind of miffed that you must choose at least one of rice or beans. You cannot skip those. You must choose at least one. The reason? Because that's how they fill those tacos. My friend and I could not believe the scant amount of meat in those tacos. We estimated that each taco (3 in an order) averaged just a mere tablespoon of meat. They were also uncomfortably messy to eat. These were not street tacos. These were not walk down the block while you eat tacos. They were a mess.

I am consistently irked at how their assembly-line approach rushes you through. My friend and I both lamented on how quickly after we made our meat choices, they were ready to wrap our tacos. They rush you through so fast that you really don't have time to take a breath, let alone blink. I take the time I need with them now to make sure I am getting what I want. They get very impatient: "behind you, behind you, behind you."

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