Chipotle: A Failing Empire

We all talk insensately about the farm to table movement, GMOs and the obesity epidemic. Well, anyone who is of age has probably heard everything there is to say on the matter, and if they are going to do anything about it now is the time. Who we really need to be talking to about these issues are the children; forget the diabetic overweight Twinkie eating parents, they are doomed; save the children, save the planet.

So Chipotle, the stock market darling of healthy fast food upstarts for the past decade, has lost their mojo, lost sight of their original intent and turned their back on the principles that brought them to the big boy table in the first place and for what, the almighty dollar? For this lack of truth and integrity they might as well have been mining for coal in the Appalachia’s.

When Chipotle first started up it was a fresh, radical approach to what was considered fast food. Founder Steve Ells, a graduate of the culinary institute in Hyde Park New York, armed with an externship at the then trendsetting Stars restaurant in San Francisco, brought Mission style burritos to Denver, CO in 1993 and hit a home run with young adults. Touting the use of fresh local foods and ingredients, they found a niche within the college crowd.

As the company expanded it wasn’t until McDonald’s Corporation came on board as a major investor in 1998 that Chipotle grew from sixteen sites to five hundred. I was shocked to learn that Mickey D was behind the growth of what seemed to be a group of young, organic focused hippies that just happened to hit the mother load. Chipotle was now neck deep in the corporate world of greed and apparently corruption.

Now with people getting ill across the country from e coli in nine states it is quite obvious that Chipotle’s ads for using locally raised crops and foods that come within a three hundred and fifty mile radius is not accurate. Because if that was true this food borne epidemic would not be covering such a wide geographic spectrum. Why is it so hard for them to find the source of this outbreak? There is obviously a production facility supplying the individual restaurants with a product or products that are contaminated--it isn’t rocket science.

Chipotle’s banner advertising slogan of “Food with Integrity” is somewhat tarnished and rightly so. The company based its platform on the following; organic produce locally sourced, sustainably produced, no GMOs, free range pork and chicken and with produce coming from within a 350 mile radius. Well I think it is safe to say the avocados, tomatoes, jalapenos and cilantro included in that proclamation would not apply to the Minneapolis and Fargo units and those in Canada, Britain and the European outposts.

Which brings me back to the farm to table movement and sourcing local ingredients on a year round basis. Without being the scrooge in the room, anyone who thinks restaurants can source only local ingredients year round is a bit dim. Oh, it can be done, but in climes such as ours the menu might be a bit limited. Why do you think our Norwegian forefathers pickled and dried fish? Look around, the ground is frozen and yes some industrious farmers are tunnel farming, but not on a scale to feed our growing city, and one of the best cities statistically, in America.

Don’t misunderstand me on the issue of supporting local farming. I am all for it and have been championing these issues from the eighties taking on some big tomato producers in Florida while supporting local growers in Homestead, Florida. This is not a new movement. To imagine a utopia where everyone is eating farm to table organic food is noble but you had better lobby to get the minimum wage raised to twenty dollars an hour so everyman can afford to buy it.

Organic, farm raised foods are elitist and an economic divider. Ride your bike over to one of the more “common” grocery stores. Look over the cars in the parking lot and then spend some time in the store. Observe the clientele, look at the rows and rows of canned and frozen goods, think of the millions of people who feed their families everyday on what they can afford. Now, until someone can tell me how we can have everyone share in the farm to table utopia on a mass scale, I suggest we tone down the rhetoric and work on a plan to educate children on healthy eating and healthy activities.