marketing teardown: chipotle

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hey marketer! 

today, we deep dive into some extra guac with this one.

brand in the hot seat: 🌯chipotle

chipotle has been getting roasted lately, and I’ve been sipping the tea.

they’ve been going through it this summer with allegations of reducing portion sizes, an odd response from the CEO with a secret head nod, and then, the most damning piece: data from a well fargo analyst who order 75 burrito bowls and recorded the portion sizes.

wow. what is a brand to do?

this is what I’m exploring:

today's treasure trove

• negative press & how they responded

• how chipotle could respond

• marketing strategy moving forward

negative press & how they responded

wait wait – before we dig into the recent news, let’s roll the clocks back to 2015.

chipotle is center of attention for every food company’s worst nightmare: an e. coli outbreak.

entrusting companies with preparing our food takes loads of trust, and when something like this happens, it’s a struggle to win it back.

that was strike one – and people don’t easily forget that sort of thing.

moving on to the onslaught of poor news, it was kicked off with theories on social media that the portion sizes were getting smaller BUT if you record a video of your burrito prepper, they’ll go big.

next, the CEO went on tiktok to suggest doing a head nod to get more food.

okay. but then went on cnbc to also mention that it’s rude to record employees – and hey, fair enough, but he denied any changes in portion sizes.

so, how does the public respond?

analyst: *hold my coffee

quantitative data – hard to argue with that.

so far in this epic battle, chipotle and the public have thrust and parried, but denial is not gonna sweep the problem under the rug anymore.

chipotle is at an inflection point right now where they’ve been accused and found guilty. time for the big pr guns to step in.

how chipotle could respond

think back to 2010, apple releases the iphone 4 and then endures what is dubbed “antennae-gate” – essentially the phone drops calls more often when held a certain way.

but the enigmatic steve jobs waltzes in to save face and save the day.

at the next wwdc, jobs delivers a masterclass in pr incident response by:

1. acknowledging the issue and explain why he thinks it’s happening

2. putting it in perspective – that the “antennae-gate” is far overblown

3. revealing a solution – using a certain phone case

4. offering the solution – giving away the cases for free

5. making amends – for customers still not happy, apple will give a full refund

chipotle has to do more than a speech at a dev conference though.

what they could do is treat this situation with an internal investigation (maybe even using a brand name consulting firm, even if just to be boujee about it), complete with customer interviews, restaurant and management auditing, and their own quantitative analysis.

then, admit that they were wrong. portions varied too much. and apologize, not with a single tiktok video, but a whole ad campaign (like domino’s did) or min-documentary.

find the solution, state it, and then don’t just fix it, but go hard on overcorrecting and make a show of it. e.g.

• if the weight in an issue, build scales into the prep counters with numbers facing the customer

• if spoon size is the issue, switch to clear spoons with “fill to” indicator lines

• if a customer’s bowl gets to checkout and it’s too light, give it to them for free

• start a new “giant burrito” annual promotion where everything is double-portioned at regular price

• set up a “burrito cam” web feed of bowls being made in their random restaurants

marketing strategy moving forward

chipotle should face facts and eat it for a minute while their rep recovers.

run the aforementioned campaigns showing management, customers, and auditors evaluating and fixing this issue. heavy focus on brand.

pause new product development and roll back expansion and focus on getting customers back into the stores to win back their trust.

chipotle might even use this opportunity to rebrand and recommit to their company values.

as they recover, they could focus on influencer marketing on tiktok (where this whole debacle began).

next, start a non-profit arm to provide food to low-income families – a slogan here being “we believe everyone should get enough food.”

that’s what I got to say about chipotle. 

thanks for reading and I’d love to hear what thoughts you have about toys r us and this teardown. (and read the other deep dives here)

✌️,

tom from marketer gems