As Hoyas migrate back to the Hilltop for fall classes, how we occupied ourselves for the past three months is sure to be a choice topic of conversation. What did I do? I helped lead a revolution—I worked at Chipotle.
For some, a look of awe comes over, eerily similar to the face one makes when unwrapping a burrito. For others, jealousy creeps over as they realize how inadequate their internship at the White House was. But everyone has the same question: How was it?
“I smelled like a burrito after work” is met consistently by positive reactions by my male friends.
“I made all the chips and crispy tacos” usually evokes a sense of respect followed by confusion. “Chipotle has hard shell?”
But each time I squeezed a lime wedge over a fresh batch of chips and a satisfying sizzle erupts, I know my time at Chipotle is more than just a collection of amusing experiences. I am part of a mission.
Armed with plastic gloves and aprons, Chipotle restaurant crews worldwide are revolutionizing the food industry.
“White or brown rice, black or pinto beans?” I ask the customer in front of me. It is an important question. Chipotle buys only organic beans, along with a substantial amount of other organic produce. Organic farming produces more nutrient-rich food by growing multiple kinds of crops and rotating the fields in which they grow. Organic methods also use natural fertilizers such as decaying plant matter rather than synthetic fertilizers. These often contain ammonium nitrate, whose evaporation creates the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and whose runoff pollutes waterways.
“What kind of meat today?” I continue. Another good question. Chipotle commits itself to serving meat from naturally raised animals. Each spoonful of carnitas comes from an animal that was raised without antibiotics, without hormones, in a field, rather than a cage. Factory farming is a concerning reality in the food industry. Kept in cramped pens indoors, animals are pumped full of medicine to prevent disease and hormones to create muscle without movement. American pork produces administer over 10 million pounds of antibiotics a year to their livestock, more than triple the human consumption of antibiotics.
As I grace a tortilla with juicy steak, I am on the front lines of a food industry revolution. Chipotle occasionally must serve traditionally-raised beef as the supply of naturally raised beef does not match demand. But continued demand is essential in the fight against factory farming.
Food industry veterans told Chipotle founder and CEO Steve Ells it couldn’t be done: organic produce and naturally-raised meat would be too costly for the fast food business model.
Ells broke all the rules. Chipotle has provided local and ethically raised food on a mass scale, spending more on ingredients than payroll. Ells’ model is so iconoclast it spurred a new term in the food industry: fast casual—where quality food meets McDonald’s speed. Chipotle challenged everything America knew about fast food and proved that we would pay for better food, paving the way for other quality-minded restaurants to follow.
Chipotle offers quality and choice, which makes for happy customers as well as some humorous situations for its workers.
One customer so enthralled with the prospect of Chipotle forgets a few contextual details in his order. I ask, “Hi sir, what can I get for you today?” And he replies, “Chicken.”
Another tentatively reads an order from her iPhone: “Do you know what a quesorito is? It’s for my son.” And then I help her navigate the behemoth that is a quesadilla-wrapped burrito.
One can walk into Chipotle and witness the myriad of choices for its customers. Less immediately obvious is the greater choice Chipotle offers—the ability to choose food cultivated and raised responsibly. This is the Chipotle manifesto: give people the power to choose, to demand better, responsible sustenance. Their demand creates the market that rebels against traditional conceptions of what the food industry can be.
The choice isn’t black or pinto. It is so much more.
***The above words were written of the author’s own volition and not under the influence of a steaming, perfectly-rolled carnitas burrito.
They are using conventional beef at many of their stores. I wrote them about this and they claiming there is a shortage and to combat the shortage, they will be importing their meets from Australia. In my opinion Chipotle is just another company that is taking advantage of consumers by jumping on the local food non-gmo bandwagon and are practicing bait and switch. There is no shortage of local farmers around here that they could draw from. I am surrounded by them.
Here is their email response to my inquiry regarding a sign at the Ocala store stating that due to a shortage they are using conventional beef…. Hi Karen,
I’m really sorry to hear you’ve had any cause to doubt our integrity and sorry that we’ve been serving conventionally raised beef at your local Chipotle for so long. If I could blink and make it so, no restaurant anywhere would go a day without Responsibly Raised ingredients. Though we purchased over 45 million pounds of domestic Responsibly Raised beef in 2013, the United States is facing the smallest cattle population since the 1950s. Because we get our ingredients from better sources and have over 1600 restaurants, the supply found at local grocery stores might not even be able to make a dent in the kind of supply we need to get us through the over 500,000 people one of our restaurants may serve in a single day. We also have strict requirements for the farms we source from and buying the beef at the scale we need is a complex task. In recent months, we began sourcing grass-fed beef from Australia to increase the amount of grass-fed beef we are able to provide for our customers. We are working to offer Responsibly Raised beef again as quickly as we can.
In the meantime, we post signs in the restaurant (as you mentioned) to ensure transparency about our ingredients and to encourage awareness in our customers about where food comes from. We hope that by sharing these shortages with our guests, you are given the choice to eat the other Responsibly Raised options, like our chicken or carnitas, and a conversation about the state of our current food industry may be expanded to more dinner tables. Again, I’m sorry that another day every passes with conventionally raised meats on the line, but changing the food industry is a journey that will take some time.
I will forward your concerns to the head of the Food With Integrity program, but I do want to clarify that Responsibly Raised does not necessarily mean grass-fed beef or animals fed on strictly non-GMO feed. While we are striving to eliminate GMOs from our supply chain, there is currently not a viable supply of Responsibly Raised meats and dairy from animals raised without GMO feed. We’re always striving to source better ingredients, and we recognize that the feed given to the animals that provide our meat and dairy is an area for potential improvement. We have recently begun transitioning to non-GM flour tortillas, crispy tacos, and chips and are closer than ever to removing GM ingredients from our menu. You may want to check out our website to see how far we’ve come and check back on our progress. You can read our Food With Integrity pages here: http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx. Our Ingredients Statement is also a great source of information about each of our ingredients: http://www.chipotle.com/…/ingredients_statement.aspx.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reach out. We appreciate hearing from a concerned and caring fan and we hope that we have your continued support as we strive to serve Food With Integrity. Now that you know a bit more about us, we’d love to have you back in again for a better visit on us! If you’re willing, please reply with your postal address and I’ll have a free-burrito card (good for any main menu item) in the mail.
Sincerely,
Andrea
Customer Service Consultant
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Here is my response from over 3 weeks ago. They have not responded or sent me a free burrito card….
Thank you for your response. I am sure it is a challenge to get the products you need in the quantities you require. Have you considered working with the University Extension offices? There is an Extension office in each county throughout the country that works with local farmers. Their focus in the past several years has been to develop local food markets and many beginning farmers look to them for advice, as well as existing farmers. They offer workshops, newsletters, and personal farm visits. It seems like this would be a natural place to start for recruiting local farmers to supply your products. If a bulletin were put together and extension agents trained with your criteria, they could encourage farmers to meet the criteria you are looking for and offer advisement. A co-op of sorts could be started in certain areas where farmers would take their beef for processing. There are many existing processors that you could contract with for the farmers to take for processing. Since most processors process conventional beef, Chipotle’s beef could be kept separate to avoid contamination by either processing it a set day per week or first thing in the morning before the lines have been dirtied… you can get a list of processors for each state from the Extension office website.
Another suggestion would be to work with the Beginning Farmers Program through the Land Stewardship Project, http://landstewardshipproject.org/morefarmers/fbotherregions. They offer classes and assistance to new and beginning farmers. A presentation at the Small Farm Conference would be another recruiting method once you get a structured program set up and have identified a processor http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu/. It seems as though there are enough cattle farmers in this country and enough struggling farmers, that importing your beef from Australia should be unnecessary. A local producer loan or grant program similar to that of Whole Foods’ is another way to help get farmers to change over and ultimately change the food system. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/…/caring…/lplp-faq.
Please consider the suggestions I have made, as I do hope that your company is authentic in its commitment to changing and improving the food system and supporting local farmers. A company like Chipotle could make a real difference in many US farmer’s lives and the way we eat as a culture. Below is my address for you to send a burrito-card.