We care deeply about where our ingredients come from. While industrial farming practices have evolved to maximize profits and production, we make an extra effort to partner with farmers, ranchers, and other suppliers whose practices emphasize quality and responsibility.
Chipotle
How to Define – and Align – Your Brand's Purpose, Vision and Mission
6 years ago - With a growing body of evidence showing that purpose-driven brands are more successful at attracting customers, retaining talent and delivering financial returns, it’s increasingly important to define some essential elements that can bring meaning to your brand: purpose, vision and mission. Whether you’re building a global brand or a young challenger brand, any brand big or small can benefit from this kind of clarity. Here’s how one of each — Unilever and Burger Lounge (a client of mine) break it down:
Touching Your Soul: Responsible Brands, the Survival of our Species and the New Nutty
6 years ago - Great brands don’t stop at connecting with mere outward expressions of who we think we are or what we want to be. The very best brands connect with long-held mystical beliefs underlying our rational selves, the parts of our sub-consciousness that manages and helps us to cope with all the irrational, arbitrary, inexplicable unknowns in life. These thoughts take shape in symbols forged from ancient stories reflecting patterns of thought and beliefs about how we understand ourselves. Carl Jung argues these narratives and their archetypal characters are universally present in our individual psyches, to which we are powerfully attracted as a means of giving life meaning and managing reality.
How to (and How Not to) Use Humour, 'Macho-Eco' Identities to Communicate Sustainability
7 years ago - This Tuesday afternoon breakout session saw Thomas Kolster, founder and creative director at the Goodvertising Agency, and Kerry Eustice, Editorial Partnerships Editor at The Guardian Sustainable Business, share their perspectives on changing the conversation around sustainability values.Early on, Kolster asserted that sustainability advertising is not doing enough to drive change, as it tends to be less engaging than other advertising messages. He and Eustice discussed dos, don’ts and new approaches that could change the way the message of sustainability is communicated.
Walmart Workers Launch #FastFor15 Movement for $15/Hr, Full-Time Pay
7 years ago - Walmart employees’ low wages make it difficult for them to meet ends meet, and many go hungry or require assistance from local programs and food banks, according to OUR Walmart - a worker-led organization focused on pressuring the world’s largest retailer to pay its workers $15 an hour and extend full-time employment. To bring the issue to the attention of the Walton family leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, OUR Walmart has launched a “Fast for 15” initiative.
Chipotle Continues Effort to Educate Consumers on What's in Their Food with 'Friend or Faux'
7 years ago - While major restaurant chains including McDonald’s, Subway, Panera and Taco Bell have recently begun to move away from unpronouncable, unfamiliar ingredients such as propionic acid and Yellow No.
Trending: Subway, Kroger Face Public Pressure to Ditch Antibiotic-Laden Meat
7 years ago - Growing public health and consumer safety concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in food has sparked a wave of resistance, with both Subway and Kroger facing pressure this week to curb their reliance on antibiotics — which the companies say they use to promote growth and produce their meat efficiently.Opposition to the excessive antibiotics use has arisen from the spread of antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ bacteria, which render infections that are normally treatable with antibiotics more severe and even deadly. Food contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one way in which ‘superbugs’ can be transmitted from farms to people.
Chipotle to Offer Employee Benefits Including Sick Pay, Tuition Reimbursement
7 years ago - Having already eliminated genetically engineered ingredients and removed carnitas from the menu in some locations rather than serve pork that doesn’t meet its animal-welfare standards, Chipotle Mexican Grill is once again walking its “Food with Integrity” talk — the burrito chain has announced it will expand benefits formerly reserved for salaried workers, including full tuition reimbursements, sick pay and paid vacations, to all employees on July 1, according to
Chipotle Cuts Genetically Altered Food From Menu
7 years ago - Chipotle has become the first major restaurant chain to announce it will begin serving only food that is free of genetically engineered ingredients, The New York Times reports.Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle, said this is another step toward the company’s vision of changing the way people think about and eat fast food.“Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors,” he said.
Trending: NGOs Prompt Sweeping Improvements to Animal Welfare in the Dairy Supply Chain
7 years ago - Animal welfare NGOs Mercy for Animals (MFA) and The Humane League declared victories this week, having motivated more large food companies to reform their animal treatment policies, this time after exposing supplier cruelty toward dairy cows and veal calves.
Marketers Cleverly Crafting Brand Messaging to Broaden Appeal of Better Products
8 years ago - As Super Bowl XLIX shapes up to kick off on Sunday, NBC is selling 30-second spots for $4.4-4.5 million, and 95 percent of in-game ad inventory is already sold on what has become digital advertising’s biggest day.By leveraging a massive event such as the Super Bowl, which last year set a record as the most-watched American television program in history with an average audience of 111.5 million viewers, more marketers are betting millions on shifting those viewers’ perception and understanding of sustainability with their carefully crafted ads.
White Castle's Veggie Sliders Reflect a More Conscious Fast Food Industry in Transition
8 years ago - It is not easy being a fast food restaurant chain these days. New fast-casual restaurants such as Panera Bread and Chipotle offer diners more updated and healthful menu options in a setting much more appealing than the dreary and dingy plastic cafeteria environment typical of fast food chains. And as more consumers want to know where their food comes from and what those companies do with those profits, fast food restaurants as they stand are about as unsustainable as they come.
No Carnitas for a Third of Chipotle Diners After Pork Supplier Violates Animal-Welfare Standards
8 years ago - Chipotle is walking its “Food with Integrity” talk with the decision this week to eliminate carnitas from the menu at about a third of its 1,800 U.S. locations, after discovering that one of its pork suppliers violated the company’s animal-welfare policies.“Without this pork, we cannot get enough pork that meets our Responsibly Raised standard for all our restaurants, and we will not be able to serve carnitas in some locations,” Chipotle said in a statement, though the company declined to name the supplier in question.
Chipotle Leads with Sustainability to Maintain Brand Sheen
8 years ago - While the fast-food business in the United States remains sluggish and roiled, eco-conscious burrito chain Chipotle has experienced rapid and relatively smooth growth through the recession and, especially, since then: Same-store sales rose by 20 percent last quarter. But lately the chain has demonstrated a few chinks in its tortilla wrap even while it also has stepped up its sustainability efforts.
Report: Sustainability Helping Restaurants Win Customers
8 years ago - Forward-thinking restaurant operators are more frequently using marketing strategies that incorporate health, safety and environmental concerns, which can resonate with consumers seeking out more responsible restaurants and food choices, according to a new report by market research publisher Packaged Facts.
Food Forward: The Food Revolution Is Being Televised
8 years ago - A new documentary TV series, “Food Forward,” highlights the range of issues created and affected by our increasingly unsustainable food ecosystem, as well as the “food rebels” helping to transform it. The 13-episode series premieres on PBS on September 4.“Food Forward” highlights farmers, ranchers, chefs, scientists, teachers and fishermen in more than 50 US communities who are part of a rising urban agriculture, building local food systems and contributing to a cleaner, more sustainable economy. Interestingly, many of the methods modeled by these food revisionists emulate more traditional farming, ranching and fishing models.
Can Chipotle Learn About Food Integrity from McDonald's?
8 years ago - This post is part of a series written by MBA and MPA candidates in Presidio Graduate School’s Managerial Marketing course, examining the role of marketing in advancing sustainability across all sectors.
Hackers Help Chipotle, Applegate Re-Engineer the Future of Dining
8 years ago - Food+Tech Connect's recent Hack//Dining hackathon in New York City has yielded some insightful solutions to big problems faced by the dining industry. The call to “re-engineer the future of food” was answered by nearly 200 hackers who spent the weekend trying to use technology to find answers for a more sustainable industry.“The problems in the food industry are complex, and they aren’t going to be solved in a weekend,” said Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect. “The point is to get new ideas into circulation, new people working on this, and to do rapid prototyping — to actually make a real product in a weekend.”
#SB14sd: Can Social Impact Help You Grow Your Brand? Use the Social Value Index™ to Know Before You Invest.
8 years ago - It’s the same old story: Consumers say they care about social impact but their behavior just doesn’t match their statements. So marketers and brand managers have rightfully begun to doubt this claim. Why does this happen? Because the traditional approach to determining what social impact to fund has been more like guesswork than the rigorous consumer research approaches used for other marketing decisions. The result is that brands and companies spend literally billions of dollars on causes and issues in hopes their consumers will care. There must be a better way. And now there is...
The 'CVS Effect' in Action: Lessons from Chipotle's #BurritosNotBullets CSR Win
8 years ago - After a bruising shareholder vote-down on executive pay last week, Chipotle Mexican Grill sure needed a win.It got one, courtesy of some loaded semi-automatic weapons and some pissed-off moms. In a May 19 statement, the company asked customers not to bring guns into Chipotle restaurants.This is another great example of what I’m calling the “CVS Effect” — the growing trend of companies doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do.
How to Redefine Capitalism-as-Usual (or 8 Steps to Becoming a Truly Sustainable Brand)
8 years ago - When Patagonia launched its Responsible Economy campaign last fall, VP of Environmental Initiatives Rick Ridgeway eloquently summed up the ‘elephant in the room’ of capitalism: Growth is not sustainable. Ridgeway accepts that evolving from our current economic system will be especially challenging for larger companies with insatiable IPOs, but I’d like to share some ways it not only can be done but is being done.1. CSRCorporate social responsibility has been a fantastic gateway for newcomers to sustainable business values, allowing a brand to better understand its impacts and act as a baseline to refer back to over time.