The Ethics of What We Eat by Jim Mason

Author:Jim Mason
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: SOC055000, PHI005000, HEA017000
ISBN: 9781921799655
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-05-16T04:30:00+00:00

A Fast Food Chain: Chipotle

Most of the corporations that supplied the food our families ate ignored our requests for information about their production methods. But one morning the phone rang and a voice said: ‘Hello, Jim? Steve Ells, from Chipotle… Chipotle Mexican Grill. I’m intrigued by your project. I don’t know if you know anything about Chipotle…’

Steve Ells is the founder and CEO of Chipotle. He opened the first Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in the Denver area in 1993, based on the idea of using fresh ingredients to provide great tasting burritos and tacos, served quickly. The concept brought in customers. Soon there was a second location, then a third. Ells went about looking for capital to expand the chain, but he found investors wary, until he made a deal with McDonald’s. They brought the capital, networks and human resources that helped Chipotle grow and eventually took a majority stake in the chain. Of the relationship, Chipotle’s Chris Arnold says, ‘They were impressed from the first visit. They’ve recognised that the way we do things is very different and they’ve been largely hands-off, leaving the running of the business to us.’ (In more staid corporations, Arnold might be called Vice-President for Public Relations, but at Chipotle, it’s Director, Hoopla, Hype & Ballyhoo.)

Then in 2000, Ells started to take Chipotle in a new direction. ‘I had the idea,’ he told us, ‘that just because it’s fresh, doesn’t mean it’s good enough.’ He wrote a manifesto called ‘Food with Integrity’, which ‘means working back along the food chain. It means going beyond distributors to discover how the vegetables are grown, how the pigs and chickens are raised, where the best spices come from’. That’s why Ells was excited enough about our book to call us personally. He wasn’t surprised to learn that many companies had not wanted to tell us about their suppliers. ‘Of course they don’t,’ he said, ‘it’s not something that they would be proud of.’

In 2000, after reading about Niman Ranch in a food magazine, Ells sought out Bill Niman and asked for a sample. At the time, he had about 60 restaurants. For the pork in his burritos and carnitas, he started buying Niman Ranch’s pork, raised on farms like those owned by Mike Jones and Tim Holmes. Customers didn’t flinch at paying an extra dollar for Niman’s pork. Chipotle’s purchases were useful for Niman, because they didn’t need the most popular cuts—such as chops and loins—that were in demand from other restaurants and specialty stores. Chipotle also uses other pork suppliers, but all of them must allow their pigs adequate space to move around, either by access to the outdoors or in pens deeply bedded with straw.

Chipotle is known for using irreverent humour in its advertising—check out the company’s website www.chipotle.com and you’ll see what we mean. Ells does not say much on the menu about the pig farms he buys from, but he says plenty in his advertisements and restaurant posters. One advertisement says, ‘Eat a burrito.

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