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Chipotle

July 23, 2020

Chipotle Increases Digital Sales 216.3%, Experiments With Delivery Pricing

It seems Chipotle has one-upped itself again in terms of sales numbers. For the quarter ending on Jun 30, digital sales increased 216.3 percent to $829 million. Digital sales made up well over half — 60.7 percent — of Chipotle’s overall sales. More than half of those sales are pickup, with the rest coming from delivery, CEO Brian Niccol said on this week’s earnings call.

As we’ve discussed before, a big reason the brand has managed to not just survive but break sales records during the pandemic is that Chipotle has been aggressively pursuing its digital strategy for a few years now. And between the first quarter’s earnings call and today, the company has doubled-down on its drive-thru lanes for mobile orders, launched a direct-to-consumer farmer’s market for its suppliers, and created a virtual version of its famous assembly line, among other things.

A restaurant breaking sales records during a devastating pandemic is news enough, but Niccol outlined multiple other new developments, most notably around the company’s delivery strategy. He noted that “partnering with all the major third party delivery aggregators has led to an increase in orders, a reduction in delivery time and cancellations and an improvement in overall customer ratings.”

However, for both independent restaurants and mega chains like Chipotle, with third-party delivery come sky-high, controversial commission fees that eat into profit margins. In response to those as well as some higher supply chain costs, Chipotle said it would test raising the prices on items for third-party delivery. “Similar to what many of our peers are already doing, we’re about to experiment with delivery menu prices as a way to potentially help offset this headwind and fully capture the margins expected at this volume,” said CFO John R. Hartung.

Hartung didn’t elaborate much on the call about where those tests would take place, how long they will run, and how much higher items on third-party delivery sites would be compared to ordering for pickup via the Chipotle app.

Chipotle may be one of the undisputed leaders in terms of QSRs aggressively pursuing digital, but it’s hardly alone. Starbucks has said it is reformatting many of its traditional cafe-style stores to be digital-focused to-go locations, Burger King is testing more delivery hotspots, and Taco Bell has launched a brand-new loyalty program.

Niccol said on this week’s call that he expects order-ahead transactions to continue to be a major driver of future growth for the company. Whether that means the chain will break another record come next quarter remains to be seen. 

July 15, 2020

Chipotle’s High-Tech Drive-Thrus Will Steer the Brand’s Future Plans

Today, fast-casual brand Chipolte said it is celebrating the launch of its 100th Chipotlane, the chain’s version of a high-tech drive-thru, but there was much more to the announcement than marking that milestone. This latest Chipotlane comes at a time when the brand is shifting most of its focus to off-premises formats fueled by digital ordering. To that end, the chain said today that more than 60 percent of new stores it opens will focus on drive thru. We’re officially in the Chipotlane Era, folks.

Chipotlanes are built specifically to service customers placing orders digitally via the Chipotle app. A great piece from the RestaurantDive folks today notes that Chipotlane-equipped restaurants generally have sales that are 5–10 percent higher than other locations. In the same article, Scott Boatwright, Chipotle’s Chief Development Officer, said, “We’re really pivoting the entire portfolio to this Chipotlane concept.”

It doesn’t take a genius to understand why Chipotle is focused so intently on the drive-thru. Stay-at-home restrictions already pummeled the restaurant industry once, and there are many question marks around what this latest round of halted reopenings, and state-mandated shutdowns of restaurant dining rooms will do to business over the next few months.

But one thing that isn’t a question is the industry-wide shift to off-premises formats. It was already happening pre-pandmic, and in fact Chipotle recently had its best quarter ever for digital sales because it was already focused on building out more to-go-centric stores. Since then, Starbucks has said it is reformatting many of its traditional cafe-style stores to be to-go locations, and other major chains are likely to follow.

A big bonus of all this is that, for Chipotle at least, the shift to digital and off-premises is creating more jobs. In today’s announcement, the chain said it will hire as many as 10,000 new employees to assist with the fulfillment of these many Chipotlane orders to come.

July 13, 2020

NPD: As QSR Transactions Improve, Full-Service Restaurants Continue to Struggle

Consumer transactions at restaurants have seen some improvement in the last couple weeks compared to the early days of the pandemic, though not much of it has gone beyond the quick-service restaurant.

NPD released new data today that notes consumer transactions at major U.S. restaurant chains declined 10 percent compared to one year ago for the week ending July 5. That’s a slight uptick from the previous week’s decline of 14 percent. 

However, NPD notes that “all of the improvement in the week sources to major quick service restaurant chains, where customer transaction declines improved by 4 points from the prior week’s decline of 13 percent versus year ago.”

That QSRs are seeing the bulk of the improvements shouldn’t surprise. The QSR format is inherently designed to better serve off-premises orders than full-service dine-in restaurants. Even before the pandemic and shelter-in-place mandates upset the entire industry, QSRs were accelerating their efforts to offer more pickup, delivery, and drive-thru capabilities. Starbucks, for example, has said 80 percent of its orders were already to-go before the pandemic. And a large portion of Chipotle’s business has for more than a year now been dedicated to building out off-premises-friendly store formats and developing a robust digital ordering strategy. 

Chipotle is a good illustration of how much more quickly and nimbly many QSRs were able to act in the wake of the pandemic compared full-service restaurants. Once social distancing measures went into effect, the chain simply accelerated its existing efforts around off-premises and digital ordering. The result was that Chipotle recorded its highest quarter ever for digital sales in Q1 2020. 

The last few months have been a much harder haul for full-service restaurants. NPD reported this week that full service restaurants saw customer transactions down -30 percent compared to one year ago, which is a five-point decline from the previous week. 

Author and NPD food industry advisor David Portalatin said that “full-service performance remains largely at the mercy of governmental regulation and the persistence of the coronavirus. For many full-serves, making the pivot to off-premise is far more difficult.”

As of right now, many would-be restaurant customers are still wary of actually sitting down in a dining room to eat a meal. The current spike on coronavirus cases across the U.S. also complicates matters, since some states have had to halt or roll back their reopening plans.

These challenges aren’t going to let up anytime soon, unfortunately. In all likelihood, nobody will be dining out en masse until a vaccine is found and widely administered. By then, consumer behaviors may have shifted to off-premises orders so heavily many people may not want to eat out, at least not on a regular basis. That will present a whole new bucket of challenges for restaurants and restaurant tech companies alike.

June 30, 2020

Chipotle Launches a Direct-to-Consumer Virtual Farmers’ Market for Its Suppliers

As if helping reinvent the restaurant weren’t enough, Chipotle is now trying to digitize the farmers’ market concept. Today, the fast casual chain announced the Chipotle Virtual Farmers’ Market, which gives the company’s suppliers a chance to sell their good directly to consumers via e-commerce. 

Four suppliers are currently selling their wares through those online storefronts now: Niman Ranch, Petaluma Creamery, McKaskle Family Farm and Meister Cheese. Each Chipotle supplier gets their own online storefront through which it can sell meat, dairy, grain, and other items (grits!). Chipotle said in today’s press release it is covering hosting fees for the sites (which are powered by Shopify) for two years and “assisting with the development” of the sites.

A quick scan through the shops turns up both items you’d find in a Chipotle burrito (pork, rice, Monterrey Jack cheese) and other food staples (grits!) for the home pantry. 

For consumers, the shopping experience is much like any other e-commerce site out there, and, for those inclined, another way to support small farms. Chipotle making these supplies available to consumers is also an extension of something we saw during the pandemic, when restaurants sold inventory directly to consumers in the midst of panic buying sprees.

No one is panic buying at the moment, but this new virtual farmers’ market powered by a major restaurant chain is another example of the blurred lines happening right now between the restaurant and the grocery store. And with the trajectory of the pandemic uncertain, some restaurants look to be riding this restaurant-as-a-market wave for the foreseeable future.

More importantly, selling directly to consumers is a way for farmers to gain more revenue at a time when the pandemic has crippled sales that would ordinarily be got from in-person farmers’ markets, restaurants, and other traditional channels. Whether tied to a major foodservice brand or no, small farms are currently encouraged to take advantage of selling directly to consumers online in order to build resilience. Judging by the state of the pandemic this week, that resilience will be needed in the near future. 

June 18, 2020

Chipotle Forges New Ways to Reach Digital Customers With Its Concierge Bot

The pandemic hasn’t done much to slow Chipotle’s digital business, which just had its best quarter ever in terms of sales. In the wake of that, the chain has steadily continued releasing new features to its app and this week brought a few more, including the launch of the Chipotle app in Canada and yet-more features for all users of the chain’s mobile app.

The standout of those new features is Pepper, a so-called Concierge Bot, which customers can use via Facebook Messenger to order food. Once a user selects the “message us” button on Chipotle’s Facebook page and gives Pepper their location, the bot will pick the nearest available Chipotle store and walk the customer through the order process. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, that process is supposed to mirror Chipotle’s in-restaurant make line, where guests move down the assembly line specifying which ingredients they want and how much of each to include. Alternatively, customers can use a natural language option and simply describe what they want to Pepper. Guests can pay directly through Pepper.

This new channel for customers to order, pay, and receive their meals introduces Chipotle’s mobile order ecosystem to yet-another potential digital audience. And while Facebook is a third-party platform, orders placed via Pepper get funneled through Chipotle’s own Page, allowing the restaurant to directly interact with those customers. Chipotle said in its release today that this new feature is meant to make “online ordering easier and more convenient for fans.” But I’ll wager it’s as much about taking back control of customer relationships (and data) as it is about giving Facebook diehards an easy way to order burritos.

The addition of Pepper also makes Chipotle the latest big-name restaurant chain to start reeling certain parts of delivery and digital ordering back under its own roof. For the last few years, managing the order-pay-dropoff process for off-premises orders has largely been the territory of third-party services like DoorDash and Uber Eats. But in the last few months, that’s started to change. Several chains, including Panera and Bloomin’ Brands restaurants, use hybrid delivery strategies, where third parties only handle a piece of the delivery operation. In some cases that’s the technical infrastructure; in others, it’s supplying drivers for the last mile. Others, notably Panda Express this week, have launched their own in-house delivery stack that manages the entire process, from ordering to dropping off.

For a deep-pocketed brand like Chipotle, this business of slowly shifting off-premises in-house is probably most about getting back control of customer relationships. The pandemic has forced restaurants to rely a whole lot more on their digital properties. Through those properties, brands must be able to offer contactless ordering and payment functionalities, and they must be able to clearly communicate with customers about those features. That’s a little tough to do if your entire customer base resides on a third-party platform like DoorDash that’s merely telling you to make the food. As one industry executive noted when we spoke a couple months back, restaurants ” need to rethink how they’re connecting digitally with their customers.”

Other announcements from Chipotle this week also emphasized Chipotle’s digital strategy and how it wants to connect with its customers in a post-pandemic restaurant industry. As well as Pepper, Chipotle also released a new group-ordering feature where multiple people can hop on the same order and everyone has the ability to track their food. 

For all digital orders placed via the Chipotle app, guests will be able to round up their order total to the next highest dollar amount and donate the extra to “organizations advocating against issues like systematic racism and inequality,” according to the press release. Chipotle will kick this program off with donations to the National Urban League.

And, as mentioned above, Canadian Chipotle fans can now use the Chipotle app or order food via Chipotle.ca, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

Chipotle’s business didn’t suffer terribly during shelter-in-place orders, largely because so much of the chain’s work over the last two years has been around developing an insanely ambitious digital strategy. This week’s news suggests the company isn’t planning to rest on its laurels anytime soon.

May 20, 2020

Chipotle Announces the Eight Ventures for Its Second Aluminaries Project Accelerator Program

Chipotle today unveiled the eight ventures selected for the second class of its Chipotle Aluminaries Project, the food-focused accelerator program the company does in partnership with non-profit Uncharted. This year’s company’s are all growth-stage startups addressing the problems currently facing young farmers and small farms, reliable access to farmland being a major one.

Around the U.S., the average price of farm real estate has more than doubled, according to the National Young Farmers Coalition. The Coalition also notes that over the next five years, almost 100 million acres of farmland will change hands, and that at least some of it will go towards non-agricultural uses. 

Given that diminished access to land, the bulk of the companies and organizations chosen for Chipotle’s Aluminaries Project 2.0 are developing solutions to address the land access issue:

  • Agrarian Trust is a land trust working to acquire and hold farmland and provide farmers access to it through long-term leases.
  • American Farmland Trust helps new farmers gain access to land through national and localized networks and services in order to transfer farms from one generation to the next.
  • Demeter Mobile uses an app to pair growers with service providers (harvesting, sweeping, etc.).
  • Farm Commons provides legal resources to farmers.
  • F.A.R.M.S also offers legal services to the farming community.
  • Rogue Farm Corps provides farm-training programs in agricultural communities across Oregon.
  • Sustainable Iowa Land Trust protects Iowa’s farmland.
  • Viva Farms provides bilingual training in organic farming practices, as well as access to land, infrastructure, equipment, marketing, and capital.

The selected companies participate in the seven-month-long program, which connects them with mentors, potential investors, and support from Chipotle executives as well as others from around the food industry. While most of the program is conducted virtually, there is a five-day in-person summit companies attend in Newport Beach, CA. There’s no cash investment involved, but participants do get free burritos. 

Chipotle launched the Aluminaries Project in 2019. It has so far seen participation from ImpactVision, Sophie’s Kitchen, and AgVoice, among others.   

 

May 19, 2020

Swipe Right for Double Guac, Chipotle Just Created a Virtual Assembly Line (Other Restaurants Should Too)

As restaurants slowly reopen with reduced capacity and more emphasis on takeout orders, one thing we will see more of is restaurant chains using tech to better customize meals purchased through mobile apps. So it should come as little surprise that Chipotle, a company known for its digital-forward business model, just released a bunch of new customization features to its app that effectively recreate the assembly line experience customers get in brick-and-mortar locations. The company announced today its Complete Customization Chipotle app, which lets customers get pretty granular about ingredient preferences and portions in their meals.

To be clear, Chipotle hasn’t released a brand-new app; all updates are to its existing one, and nothing’s changed about the way customers sign in and access menus, loyalty points, etc. Changes are more about the way customers select and customize their meals in the digital format, which Chipotle seems to hope will mirror the real world experience as much as possible.

Chipotle’s in-store format has always involved customers moving down an assembly line-style setup, dictating to staff what they want in their burritos and/or bowls, how much they want of each ingredient, and any other special instructions. The setup has always made it super-easy to customize a meal — at least, so long as you ordered that meal in the store. Up to now, the Chipotle app has been somewhat limited in terms of customization.

The features released today change that. Customers can now swipe left and right in the app to designate how much of each ingredient they want with their meal. For example, meat portions can be single or double and ingredients like salsa and sour cream can be “normal,” “light,” or “heavy.” In general, the app is now just easier to use.

While on the surface these might appear to be small changes, they actually suggest how certain restaurant types could survive in a post-pandemic restaurant industry. Per state reopening guidelines, person-to-person contact should be minimal as possible, and long lines of people waiting for their turn at the assembly station will be frowned upon if not outright banned. Offering the digital equivalent will let customers order exactly what they’re used to getting from the chain while still satisfying the requirements for social distancing.

Digitizing the assembly line is also a way for Chipotle to drive more orders to its app, which is important for a company with a future tightly tied to its digital business. That digital business surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2019, and Chipotle has also recently introduced new store formats (walk-up locations, drive-thru lanes) that lend themselves to digital and off-premises ordering. The pandemic hasn’t slowed that growth. Chipotle reported its highest quarterly level ever for digital sales on its Q1 2020 investor call in April. “As people started to implement social distancing, we moved swiftly by driving further investments toward digital and delivery designed to reduce friction, while increasing convenient access,” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said on the call. 

Advanced customization tools at QSRs and fast-casual restaurants have been a priority for some time now, with some chains — McDonald’s, Starbucks — implementing AI tools to improve personalization. But using customization to recreate in-store experiences that might otherwise go the wayside could be where customization proves itself most valuable. It’s easy to imagine chains like Subway or Blaze Pizza increasing the customization capabilities of their apps to recreate their own assembly line experiences. It might even breathe a little life back into the buffet, which is dying a painful death at the moment, by making the self-service aspect of that format virtual.

All those things cost money, which restaurants don’t have a lot of right now. Any mobile restaurant app is expensive to build in house; including sophisticated customization tools would be prohibitive for most businesses, which creates an opportunity for restaurant tech companies looking to prove their own worth in these uncertain times. 

May 6, 2020

Most Restaurants Will Mimic Shake Shack’s Digital-Centric Store Format in the Future

Shake Shack is modifying some store formats to be more off-premises friendly as the chain prepares to reopen dining rooms. These “Shack Track” stores, as they’re being dubbed, will include things like walk-up windows and more drive-thru lanes meant to encourage increased digital ordering, according to the company’s Q1 2020 earnings call this week.

Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti said on the call that the chain will start opening dining rooms regionally, though with reduced capacity to ensure social distancing guidelines are in place. There will also be fewer cashiers and kiosks in stores, and the chain plans to “shift guests to mobile and contactless pre-ordering.”

Hence the new store formats the company will test as it reopens restaurants. On the call Garutti also mentioned interior and exterior pickup windows and, where space permits, curbside pickup and drive-thru lanes, which is new for Shake Shack. The company has been testing these formats over the last several weeks while dining rooms remain shuttered. Garutti said the current pandemic has “reinforced how necessary and beneficial this strategy will be for Shake Shack.” 

It has also reinforced how necessary digital ordering and payments will be to the future restaurant experience in general. On that front, Shake Shack is better prepared than most restaurants. As of April 29, digital channels represent roughly 80 percent of total Shake Shack sales. Garutti said on this week’s call that digital sales are “very literally keeping us in business.”

The new store formats will encourage this digital preordering, and Shake Shack said it will continue to improve its digital properties and eventually integrate delivery into those interfaces, which means less reliance on third-party services Shake Shack currently has partnerships with. 

“Contactless” is definitely the buzzword du jour in the restaurant industry right now as businesses look to reopen while maintaining social distancing requirements. Not every restaurant has the cash or resources to double-down on expensive mobile apps made in-house, and so some are turning to restaurant tech companies for those digital capabilities.

Meanwhile, Shake Shack isn’t the only major chain tweaking its store format to fit our to-go-centric times. Chipotle was testing new store types long before the pandemic and will continue building those out. McDonald’s had to step on the brakes a little in terms of its Experience of the Future stores but will continue building some of those, as well. 

These redesigns matter because they could set standards for the rest of the industry in the future. Smaller chains and independent restaurants have neither the time nor the money to extensively redesign their restaurants. But as states mandate reduced capacity in dining rooms, these smaller businesses may look to the major chains for guidance on how to incorporate off-premises ideas into their business. In time, a new, standardized restaurant format (or several) could emerge that no one would have predicted two years ago — and everyone will expect a decade from now.

April 22, 2020

Despite a Pandemic, Chipotle’s Digital Business Keeps Growing

Chipotle just recorded its highest quarterly level ever for digital sales, according to the company’s Q1 2020 investor call yesterday. Company CEO Brian Niccol said digital sales grew 81 percent, to $372 million, representing 26.3 percent of sales during the first quarter.

Numbers include the month of March, when restaurants across the country started shutting down dining rooms in efforts to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The upheaval this has caused for the restaurant industry can’t be understated: everyone from small, independent restaurants to massive chains like The Cheesecake Factory have seen sales drop in some cases, and nosedive in others.

Why not Chipotle?

For one, the company has long been doubling down on its digital business, which powers off-premises orders for delivery, takeout, and drive-thru. Prior to the pandemic, Chipotle already operated a $1 billion-plus digital business. Over the last couple years, the company has forged partnerships with multiple delivery companies, revamped its rewards programs, introduced new store formats for to-go-friendly business models, and added more drive-thru lanes — “Chipotlanes” — to its locations. It helps that the chain has always offered the kinds of quick-service meals made with food that travels well.

On the call this week, Niccol suggested that in order to combat the sudden loss of dining room traffic, the company was able to accelerate its existing digital initiatives: “the majority of our restaurants are open for to-go orders, which is allowing us to successfully leverage the digital platform we put in place over the past two years.”  

He added that, “As people started to implement social distancing, we moved swiftly by driving further investments toward digital and delivery designed to reduce friction, while increasing convenient access.” 

Delivery remains the fastest-growing segment of Chipotle’s digital offerings. A partnership struck with Uber Eats in March no doubt helps, as it gives the chain access to even more potential diners. Niccol said digital order-ahead transactions were also up, “doubling from the levels seen prior to COVID.” Daily signups for the Chipotle rewards program have spiked “nearly fourfold.”

A recent consumer survey that Niccol referenced on the call said Chipotle customers would return “at a similar or higher rate than before” once the pandemic eases enough to let dining rooms reopen. Given that, Niccol said he expects the company to continue expanding unit volume, margins, and store base in the long term. 

If nothing else, Chipotle’s glowing reports of the last quarter illustrate why it’s so important now for restaurants to be running with a digital and off-premises strategy in place. For smaller businesses with shallower pockets, this of course throws a host of other issues on the table, paying third-party delivery commission fees being one of the ugliest. Smaller restaurants would also typically need to look to third-party platforms that can assist them with building and running the kind of mobile app that functions well, and also address the issue of customer data. 

Right now, most restaurants are just struggling to keep the lights on. For those that manage, pulling from Chipotle’s digital playbook is a move worth considering in the longer term. 

April 8, 2020

McDonald’s Slows Development on Its Tech-Forward Store Remodels

In an effort to reduce capital expenditures by $1 billion, McDonald’s is slowing the development of its Experience of the Future store remodels across the U.S., according to a press statement the company sent out today. 

The move comes in the wake of the mega-chain, not to mention the entire restaurant industry, having to adjust both operations and expectations to serve customers during a global health crisis. Restaurant sales are down 80 percent, and many establishments are having to quickly pivot to delivery and takeout models in order to stay in business. 

Unlike smaller restaurants with shallower pockets, McDonald’s isn’t a newcomer to the off-premises world or the technology that powers it. Up to now, the company was running a $4 billion digital business driven largely by delivery orders. Acquisitions in 2019 of Dynamic Yield (AI tech) and Apprente (voice tech) further enhanced the chain’s to-go-friendly business model, and Experience of the Future stores are meant to encompass all these elements under one roof. They also feature self-service kiosks, curbside pickup areas, improved drive-thru lanes, and many other things meant to make the customer experience at McDonald’s as speedy and efficient as possible.

Then came COVID-19. In addition to closing dining rooms across the U.S., McDonald’s has also halted operations entirely at many stores, including 50 in the U.S., and every single one in the United Kingdom. Those shutdowns also include drive-thru and delivery.

“We entered 2020 in a strong position, but of course the world has since changed,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told Nation’s Restaurant News. “While our January and February global comparable sales were strong, changes in consumer behavior and the various restrictions in place by governments around the world have led to a significant decline in sales.” 

To that end, McDonald’s says it plans to build fewer Experience of the Future stores, whether new locations or remodels of old ones, worldwide.  

Whether this is a sign of things to come from other similar chains depends. One of the major factors of Mickey D’s remodels is how costly they are — over $700,000 per store, in some cases. Not every chain’s digital business reinvention requires an architectural overhaul as well, especially if a brand is more interested in improving things like delivery and loyalty programs. That said, we may see fewer Chipotlanes and Starbucks Express Stores rolling out for the rest of 2020 — and possibly beyond.

April 2, 2020

Sweetgreen, Taco Bell Using Their Off-Premises Muscle to Feed Hospital Workers Fighting COVID-19

Sweetgreen today announced the launch of its Sweetgreen Impact Outpost Fund, a partnership with José Andrés’ World Kitchen Center (WCK) that aims to get more food to front-line medical workers in hospitals, according to a company press release. 

The new fund comes just on the heels of Sweetgreen’s Impact Outpost program, which launched two weeks ago to get free Sweetgreen meals to hospital workers and medical personnel. Outpost is Sweetgreen’s delivery-catering hybrid service that operates portable drop-off sites for deliveries. Up to now, Outpost has been seen more commonly in corporate offices.

The Impact Outpost program places these drop-off stations in hospitals. After launching the program, Sweetgreen received a ton of feedback from both large corporations and individual customers wanting to support it through donations. The new partnership with Andrés’ non-profit is a way to provide this as well as increase the number of hospitals receiving meals from Sweetgreen.

From the press release:

“Through the fund, corporations, sponsors and customers are able to join sweetgreen and WCK’s efforts to feed more front-line medical personnel working in hospitals, while also helping fund new Outposts in relief sites, including schools, senior centers and in vulnerable and high-risk communities.”

You can donate directly to on the fund’s website, and even make a donation in memory or honor of someone. The site notes that this fund will remain open “for as long as needed,” and that right now, the goal is to deliver at least 100,000 meals to workers. 

Sweetgreen is one of several notable restaurant brands now using their established off-premises platforms to deliver food to frontline workers. Also this week, Just Salad announced a partnership with Mount Sinai to deliver 10,000 meals per week across seven hospitals in NYC boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Taco Bell has turned its Taco Trucks, which are food truck versions of the QSR, into mobile commissary kitchens that bring food to frontline workers. “While most of our restaurants are operating only through the drive-thru, this leaves some truck and ambulance drivers unable to quickly order from us,” company CEO Mark King said in a letter. He added that the chain is working with its franchisees to make this service available “where possible.”

Finally, Chipotle, another QSR with a booming digital business, is giving away free burrito boxes to healthcare facilities. The boxes come with 25–50 burritos, depending on how many are needed, and will be delivered between April 6 and April 10. DoorDash, with whom Chipotle has an ongoing delivery partnership, will handle the last-mile fulfillment of the orders.

There are bound to be plenty more restaurant brands using their existing digital and delivery strategies to more easily and efficiently get meals to workers while the pandemic lasts. And judging from the latest news, that could be a while. Stay tuned.

March 18, 2020

Chipotle Partners with Uber Eats to Reach More Diners during COVID-19

Quarantined burrito lovers, take note. Chipotle announced today it has added Uber Eats to its list of third-party delivery partners. The chain also announced that it will waive delivery fees on orders of $10 or more placed through the Uber Eats app for the rest of March.

Chipotle is taking extra precautions to make sure anyone who orders through Uber Eats has the option to for “no-contact” deliveries. Chipotle food will have a tamper-evident packaging seal to prove that food has been untouched on its route to the customer.

This is the first time Chipotle and Uber Eats have teamed up for delivery, and the move is no doubt in response to the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the globe and keeping people home. Chipotle chain has had a partnership with DoorDash since 2018 and is also available through Postmates.

As resident restaurant tech expert Jenn Marston previously noted, delivery remains a major driver for digital growth for Chipotle. The company has a hybrid delivery strategy which uses a combo of in-house and third-party functionality to build out a unique delivery operation for each individual storefront. It’s also experimenting with Chipotlanes, which are drive-thru lanes that place special emphasis on mobile ordering.

Chipotle’s digital business surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2019 and digital orders made up one-fifth of the company’s sales in Q4 of last year. With the coronavirus outbreak spurring massive restaurant closures, it’s likely that Chipotle — and other fast-casual chains — will double down on its digital and delivery capabilities. With Uber Eats on its side, that could mean more burritos for all of us social distancing right now.

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