81–90 of 103 posts
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I went to Taco Bell for the first time two weeks ago while visiting the beautiful USA. And my god what a terrible food do they make. Why would you go there more then once?
The article doesn't mention that Taco Bell's kitchen systems are designed to eliminate many weak links in fast food preparation and handling. It doesn't prevent the line worker from sneezing influenza on the burrito, but that's also not how you get e.coli outbreaks. If CMG is looking to get past their previous history of systemic food safety issues, this was probably a good choice.
The article also doesn't mention that Chipotle's first big period of expansion was while it was owned by McDonalds. I have to imagine that McDonalds had an expertise in this area that at least matched Taco Bell if not greatly exceeded them.
From a comment below I just learned about the antibiotic free pork supply shortage. That's insane to me there there isn't scale for one restaurant's meat (and I guess Chipotle is by far biggest demand). Chipotle should vertically integrate and grow their own pork without compromising ethics. It's already a shit margin business, maybe going to zero margin on the farming could help.
One grows a pig, not a pork. Once you kill the pig, its name is supposed to change to pork, though why, I never understood quote well.
Cow/beef
Sheep/mutton
Chicken/poultry
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I went to Taco Bell for the first time two weeks ago while visiting the beautiful USA. And my god what a terrible food do they make. Why would you go there more then once?
I've read that at some point, Lebanese immigrants to Mexico also brought the shawarma/gyro with them and further contributed. I think it fills the same kind of food niche that Doner Kebabs fill in Europe, cheap, fast, unhealthy and filling. It's also an ideal foodtype for post-drunken late-night eating. Tacos seem to originate as a slang term used for mining charges in 18th century Mexican silver mines. At some point, somebody wrapped some meat in a tortilla and sold them as cheap laborer food.
Taco Bell was started by a guy named Glenn Bell back in the 1960s, he organized the menu, standardized on hard taco shells and a franchise model. They eventually discovered a kind of niche as a late night college food because you could easily get a couple days worth of food for cheaper than just about anywhere else -- and despite appearances has a very strong food safety record. Taco Bell is also the target of jokes about being low quality "garbage". (a common joke is that you can pick up your food at the counter and then go flush it down the toilet and cut out the middle man). Still, if you work late nights or went to college as an American, you probably ate a lot at Taco Bell and eventually developed a taste for it. If you've ever watched the movie "Demolition Man" it's a subtle joke throughout the movie that's culturally very funny to Americans.
I've never encountered a proper version of Tex-Mex outside of North America even though lots of places give it a good try. When I travel outside of the U.S. for long periods of time, it's the one kind of food I start to incessantly crave. I've noticed this among other Americans as well. Once, while doing work in Asia in an American enclave, a pop-up Taco Bell showed up charging 3 times the normal price and missing some ingredients and the line was 2 hours long.
They've tried to adopt "higher quality" ingredients and reform themselves in the past, but it's just not in their corporate DNA. More recently, they've decided to embrace their "crap food, fast and cheap" image and have developed an ever changing menu that brings in other junk food stuffs from sister brands. There's probably more food science than food in some of the menu items, but you can think of it as the cheapest molecular gastronomy meal you'll ever have.
Among immigrant friends to the U.S., most of them have their first taste of Taco Bell and think it's similarly revolting, but after a few years in the U.S. the cheapness and ubiquity of it kind of enters the diet. I know of a few people who returned to their home countries and have tried to work with Taco Bell to open franchises locally - and they all hated it the first time they ate it. My wife, a Korean immigrant, craves Taco Bell at times.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
McDonald's did indeed help Chipotle get their logistical systems in order. CMG and MCD still share some common suppliers. One area where Chipotle resisted McD's advice was in automating their kitchen systems. One example was the steak. CMG believed hand-marinating and grilling their steaks in-store was a core feature that couldn't be changed. It's also a highly risky procedure when it comes to food safety and cross-c…
2019 = Order via speech recognition 2020 = Automated kitchen systems prepare ingredients 2021 = Burrito preparation via robotics 2021 = End-to-end order fulfillment without human involvement Just a matter of time before raw ingredients are lab grown and harvested by robots. Not too long ago, this was pure fantasy. Only now is it starting to look inevitable, for better or for worse.
From a comment below I just learned about the antibiotic free pork supply shortage. That's insane to me there there isn't scale for one restaurant's meat (and I guess Chipotle is by far biggest demand). Chipotle should vertically integrate and grow their own pork without compromising ethics. It's already a shit margin business, maybe going to zero margin on the farming could help.
One grows a pig, not a pork. Once you kill the pig, its name is supposed to change to pork, though why, I never understood quote well.
Because the English upper classes were speaking Norman many of the culinary terms such as pork, beef, and poultry in modern English come from the Norman language.
But because animals would have been raised by common people they retained the Old English derived names such as pig, cow, chicken.
From a comment below I just learned about the antibiotic free pork supply shortage. That's insane to me there there isn't scale for one restaurant's meat (and I guess Chipotle is by far biggest demand). Chipotle should vertically integrate and grow their own pork without compromising ethics. It's already a shit margin business, maybe going to zero margin on the farming could help.
One grows a pig, not a pork. Once you kill the pig, its name is supposed to change to pork, though why, I never understood quote well.
https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/32560/why-are-beef-a...
Because they're both burritos
I'm sure the Taco Bell CEO gets the nuance, but if your expertise is slogging low cost / low quality ingredients...it's not obvious you're the person to solve an issue with a company struggling with high-end intentions, but low-quality results. Ever been to a Chipotle? The warning about pork carnitas is pretty off-putting. They basically say you're rolling the dice based on past performance.
Basically, he's strong in all the areas where Chipotle is perceived of as being weak.
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I went to Taco Bell for the first time two weeks ago while visiting the beautiful USA. And my god what a terrible food do they make. Why would you go there more then once?
Taco Bell loosely belongs to (maybe better to say "is inspired by" or "owes origins to") a class of regional and traditional fusion food called "Texmex". It's a uniquely North American comfort food class that naturally developed over a long period of cultural intermixing along the border region between Texas and Mexico and includes influences from native food traditions, various European immigrant food prep technique…
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I went to Taco Bell for the first time two weeks ago while visiting the beautiful USA. And my god what a terrible food do they make. Why would you go there more then once?
Because it's cheap and delicious.