Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc Food With Integrity Case Solution

2. Analysis

Chipotle being a successful business still, tends to have issues on the marketing simply because of no such backing of some huge, well-known brand. In 1998 it was backed up by McDonald's hence from there, it gained a lot of popularity, but in 2006 it divested from McDonald's. Chipotle despite that faces some key strategic issues that the firm should deal with. One of the biggest issues of Chipotle comes unsurprisingly from the financial department. As it's a rapid growing business and it tends to still avoid franchising, so finance for new operations is hard for Chipotle to accumulate.

With Chipotle’s massive numbers of outlets are rising without any limits which further make it hard for it to be managed by a specific code or quality assurance, hence it’s difficult to ensure that company standards are met and maintained thus even some outlets have lost their way leading to humiliation such as the infamous norovirus outbreak in Kent, Ohio. Chipotle’s another big issue is the competitors who are making their way further into the industry by storm. Chipotle’s two main competitors are Qdoba and Taco Bell. Among these two only Qdoba was founded after Chipotle hence is still very famous and trustworthy Mexican food in the industry (Parra, Kim, Shapiro, Gravani, & Bradley, 2014). Talking about Taco Bell which is a very famous well known Mexican eating fast food restaurant could easily be considered as the leader in the industry given that its popularity and the backing of the infamous Yum Brands which also backs up KFC (Yum! Brands, 1997). Taco Bell further with its huge funding tends to innovate and test its new products while Chipotle fails to take does this by actively avoiding franchising. Qdoba on the other hand founded in 1995 can be specified as a direct competitor of Chipotle being on the same level (Hitt, Hoskisson, & Ireland, 2015). Another issue mentioned is that Chipotle doesn't focus on all the ages of customers. Mexican food tends to be spicy hence only young people or consumers who prefer spicy food tend to be attracted towards this food. While a huge chunk of Children, Old Citizens and people with low tolerance for spices are being left out of its target market (Wrigley, 2016).

3. Solution

Chipotle's main aim as a fast food restaurant is to fight off the competition from its competitors at every step or any cost. Company's executive team has realised that it is time for Chipotle to shine among its competitors hence they have come up with few strategies to make the company get an edge over its competitors. One of the best ways is to just simply introduce some innovations. A new star chef has been hired by the Chipotle to with huge experience in the field to come up with some new items on the menu which will be tasted in different restaurants and reviewed before adapting them in the regular menu. This is said to be a gamble for Chipotle because the restaurant is strictly restricted to being a Mexican food restaurant hence not much could be added towards it and also that menu is considered to be the restaurants signature with a lot of goodwill attached to it. Chipotle has also been focusing towards the children menu too this time to bring in more children hence leading to more families coming in for the food. A lot of new items with mild taste are being introduced with some meals including a small gift or goody bag for the children. The company is also focusing on different ethnicities specially the Asians as they are to open a few Asian fast casual restaurants.