Chipotle’s Brand Has Big Burritos to Fill

Tagged as: O.P.E.N.
Posted by: Kelly Mooney 

 

Chipotle’s DSL (Don’t Stand in Line) approach to getting its burritos in your mouth as fast and easy as possible is very popular around our office. While their front door is just feet away from ours, nothing kills the I-need-a-burrito-buzz like 30 people in line in front of you. To be fair, in-store I’ve just started noticing the Apple approach, where they send an employee into the line to take orders for anyone paying with a credit card, so that helps. All in all, I love how the brand embraces efficiency on top of good (for fast)food and fun, quirky advertising.

Which brings me to the disappointment one of my colleagues experienced when ordering a Chipotle shirt online. She loved a shirt she saw on an associate in-store. He told her she could get it online. So she went to their site (which linked her to another site) and got the shirt. But she also got a very un-Chipotle-like experience.

It’s fairly transparent in the experience that the Chipotle store is run by a company called HyPERCEPTION. And I don’t want to fault Chipotle for outsourcing–I’d much rather them focus on fresh chips and salsa–but the online store experience has their name on it, and yet doesn’t live up to the brand.

For the most part, the store looks like Chipotle. But it just doesn’t feel or act like it. Not only is the language off-brand, the experience is clunky. A let-down. That cool, coveted shirt is reduced to CH-AM26CAMMBS Men’s Camp Shirt in Black. Product descriptions are generic bulleted lists. It doesn’t even have basic shortcuts like use-the-billing-address-as-my-shipping-address so there is lots of unnecessary typing. Ironcially, ordering a burrito online feels like time better spent.

Tagged as: O.P.E.N.

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