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?
Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
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Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#72Slightly 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?
Alcohol.
It’s also surprisingly vegetarian friendly compared to, say, your average burger joint.
It’s also really cheap. You can eat a days worth of calories for like $10.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I guess what I don't understand is why we don't have more human-free systems for food payment. All of 15 years ago, I went in a company cafeteria in Tsukuba, paid a vending machine, and took the ticket to the cook. If I had been able to speak any Japanese back then, I probably could have customized my order there. But here in the US we're still hiring fast food workers to take standardized orders.
Had the same thought when I was in Tokyo and seeing it more frequently in Scotland where there are more self-serve kiosks at McDonalds than there are regular tills.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#74From 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.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#75Slightly 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?
Same question. I've heard so much about Taco Bell from pop culture/internet that I just had to try it. Went to check it out during one of my trips to the US and oh boy.. I was in for a culture shock.
I had some kind of a burrito. I don't think I have ever been served food anywhere else that was more disgusting (sorry, I don't know of a more appropriate word to use here). And I'm not picky at all! I'll eat basically anything that you can throw at me - but this.. this was something else.
To be honest, I assumed and hoped it was a one-off occurrence because I couldn't imagine anybody going there more than once in their lifetime and they couldn't possibly be in the business if they'd constantly serve that kind of fast food.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it so hard for a fast food chain to avoid cross-contamination vs. other restaurants? Is it because they don't train workers properly?
I mean, if my experiences are anything, it's because people don't care enough. At fat food joints you've got a bunch of high school and college kids who want to get off and party or get off and finish their mounting homework. It's not willful, just part of being 17/18/19 at an "unimportant" job. We had some adult-adults who worked there as well, and it was a night and day difference. Again, it's not willful or malici…
> At fat food joints
I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I like it! :)
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess what I don't understand is why we don't have more human-free systems for food payment. All of 15 years ago, I went in a company cafeteria in Tsukuba, paid a vending machine, and took the ticket to the cook. If I had been able to speak any Japanese back then, I probably could have customized my order there. But here in the US we're still hiring fast food workers to take standardized orders.
They're starting to appear. McDonalds has now introduced it in multiple European countries, plus isolated restaurants here and there (e.g. Burgerlich in Hamburg, which has touchscreens embedded in the tables: https://goo.gl/oJAh9v )
Almost every McDonald's I've been to in Europe and Canada has a set of Kiosks where you can order what you want (in English) and pay. You then take a number from the kiosk and sit down and somebody brings your food out to you or screens display your pickup number when it's time. Most ones in the U.S. have stubbornly held on to the less efficient queue at the counter and talk to a bored human system.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it so hard for a fast food chain to avoid cross-contamination vs. other restaurants? Is it because they don't train workers properly?
Other restaurants have food-borne illness problems occasionally too, but when you have thousands of locations it makes national news.
But they should be isolated incidences unless you have a systematic problem. One chef treating meat incorrectly can cause issues in one restaurant but not across the country.
What Chipotle experienced was more than what you'd expect to happen in well-run restaurants that prepare everything themselves.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#79Like with Starbucks, it was the individual employees, their kindness, and their appreciation for the product that made Chipotle special for me during their non-mediocre years. I liked Starbucks the most in about 2006 and Chipotle the most at around 2010. It's too bad they're mediocre now. They still both feel magical occasionally, though. I'm not sure whether they compromised the product or the culture first.
Last few times I’ve had chipotle it’s felt like their food was never really warm. Maybe it’s all the cold ingredients being put on top. But swear the rice and meat used to be piping hot years ago.
Nailed it. It's for this reason that I eat Chipotle in-store only. By the time I make the five minute drive home it's already cold.
Re: Chipotle Taps Taco Bell CEO to Be Its New Head
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Revisit this post in a year, and I'd not be surprised to see that it was correct. Turn Chipotle into an upscale version of Taco Bell and market the pants off of crappy food and sit back and watch profits grow. Chipotle can't really compete with restaurants that actually serve good food, so why not fill the giant divide between them and Taco Bell?
Step 1 already happened, but for food safety consistency reasons. The meats are prepared off-site and shipped now, and more ingredients are frozen. The reduction in flavor quality was obvious.
Though neither freezing nor preparing off-site means flavour has to deteriorate. Frozen food can be preferable to chilled ingredients (whenever you can't get them really fresh). And much prep can be done half a day or a day in advance (as basically all restaurants do it), doing so in a centralised location shouldn't have any negative effect on flavour.
But in Chipotle's case, switching ingredients and preparation methods as a quick response to the outbreak probably led to sub-par standards and lower quality ingredients. It's not that easy changing the whole supply chain in a matter of months.