"Chipotle" news and stories

Ay, caramba! Chipotle is running low on natural chicken, particularly at its restaurants in Southern California, reports the Orange County Register. This is a pretty big deal. After all, the chain likes to tout that its ingredients are a cut above your average fast-food fare, and let's be honest: to a certain crowd, part of the appeal of Chipotle is the side dish of sanctimony you get to enjoy as you imagine the chicken that's now the star of your burrito clucking around some bucolic barnyard somewhere while its KFC-destined kin were shivering in a cage waiting for their next mega-dose of antibiotics.

A spokesman for Chipotle told the Register that the chain had experienced a "disruption" in its supply of naturally raised chicken but that it's working to resolve the problem. There was no explanation as to why, all of a sudden, naturally raised chickens are in short supply. Alas, apparently the country doesn't keep a strategic reserve of the cluckers like it does for oil.

Looks like a federal investigation is bursting Chipotle's gold-wrapped bubble. The Denver-based burrito chain is once again under investigation for the hiring of illegal workers, this time in 59 Washington, DC, and Virginia locations.

Last year, approximately 450 Chipotle workers from Minnesota were fired after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials raised questions about the validity of the worker's documents. This time around, ICE officials have "pulled the papers on every employee, about 25 in each location," reports WUSA9.

Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold told WUSA9 that every employee is required to fill out an I-9 form and that they are looking into their online E-Verify tool that looks into an applicant's status.

Chipotle fans who've come to love the chain's whole "fast-food made fresh" approach will soon be able to satisfy their on-the-go cravings with more than just burritos. May we introduce ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen.

As Slashfood reported last year, the restaurant world has been abuzz with rumors about what Chiptole founder Steve Ells was going to tackle next. News leaked out that Ells was thinking of going Asian -- but that was pretty much all anyone knew.

Now Nation's Restaurant News offers up the inside scoop on the new concept. And, basically, it seems like it's more or less Chipotle -- but serving up noodles and rice instead of rice and beans. Customers will move along the line customizing their meals, and execs confirmed that the pricing would be about the same.

Have you been watching "America's Next Great Restaurant" and thinking it's about time to launch your own dream eatery? Before you quit your day job and take up your toque, you might want to peruse Technomic's annual report on the top 500 restaurant chains in America to see where the restaurant biz is headed.

The good news? Well, the recession seems to pretty much be over, at least if you measure economic recovery in terms of burger and fries. All told, the top 500 restaurant chains in America posted an annual sales increase of 1.8 percent in 2010, a $4 billion gain over 2009. More than half of the chains saw at least some sort of sales growth, a situation that was essentially reversed the year before, reports Nation's Restaurant News.

But if you're thinking that the country is ready for your vision of a vegan-meatball-slash-marinated-tofu emporium, well, it just may behoove you to take a gander at the restaurants that made it into Technomic's top ten fastest-growing chains. The takeaway here? It seems our national appetite is anything but adventurous.

Chipotle Mexican Grill has attracted legions of die-hard fans who are drawn to the chain's feel-good mantra of "food with integrity," but will those fans follow that vision to the Far East?

As Nation's Restaurant News reports, Chipotle founder Steve Ells is developing an Asian-inspired "fast-casual" restaurant concept that will likely share his original chain's vision of fast food made with a preference for organic, locally grown produce and naturally raised meat.

Ells clearly believes that the model he developed with Chipotle can find success with other types of fare. As he said in a statement published in NRN: "Chipotle is not successful because we serve burritos and tacos. Our success comes from finding the very best sustainably raised ingredients, prepared and cooked using classical methods in front of the customer...[W]hile our Chipotle restaurants will, of course, remain our primary focus, we are also excited to see how this format works with other cuisines."