Taco USA by Gustavo Arellano

Author:Gustavo Arellano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2012-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chipotle set off an American love affair for Mission-style burritos that continues. Its chief rival also is a Denver creation: Qdoba Mexican Grill. Tony Miller was an investment banker for Merrill Lynch who returned home and grabbed a bite at Chipotle. Company lore maintains that Miller proposed a business partnership with Ells, who declined. Knowing a great business idea when he tasted one, the Coloradan opened his restaurant in 1995. Instead of just burritos and tacos, Qdoba plays around with other Mexican foods, such as licuados (Mexican-style smoothies) and mole poblano, a style they label Modern Nouveau Mex.

“To me, it’s such a misunderstood cuisine,” says Ted Stoner, the director of strategic product development. It’s a long-winded title that means he’s the man trusted with keeping Qdoba relevant in an ever-changing Mexican-food landscape. “It took Chinese and Italian a lot longer to morph into regional inspiration because the immigrants didn’t saturate the country. With the population boom of people coming over the border, it’s allowed people to absorb them much faster.”

Qdoba lags behind Chipotle but isn’t an upstart, with about five hundred locations and expanding almost as rapidly as Ells. But Qdoba also is an unlikely guardian of the burrito’s honor in courts of law. In 2006, it tried to open a location in a Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, shopping plaza. It raised the ire of the Panera chain, which had a clause in its lease that prohibited any restaurants that specialized in sandwiches from opening in its Shrewsbury location. Panera tried to argue with its landlords that Qdoba fell under that category, since burritos were obviously sandwiches. When their landlords didn’t agree, Panera took them to Superior Court.

To bolster its case, Qdoba called a former USDA official who contributed an affidavit that stated, “I know of no chef or culinary historian who would call a burrito a sandwich. … Indeed, the notion would be absurd to any credible chef or culinary historian.” A judge agreed, noting in his decision, “A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice and beans.”

The case earned national headlines—who in the twenty-first century still thought the burrito was a sandwich?—and the Qdoba opened in Shrewsbury soon after. “Short story, it looked like a frivolous lawsuit and it was that,” Stoner says. Doug Thielen, former manager of nontraditional marketing and public relations for Qdoba, was working with the franchise group in Boston to promote them when Panera filed the lawsuit. “There was a little bit of surprise—people thought, ‘Really?’” he says, laughing. “With this country being immersed in Mexican food on a regular basis, you’d figure people would know this already. From a social media perspective, people still bring this up—it was great publicity for us. Legally, burritos now stand on their own.”

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