Chipotle can be trying to build a competition against Five Guys and Shake Shack, The Business Insider reported on Sunday.
It has recently been reported by Bloomberg that Chipotle is actually considering launching a burger chain. The company has already filed a new trademark application which is "Better Burger" for this month, Chipotle's spokesman Chris Arnold told The Business Insider. Leslie Patton of Bloomberg was the first one to report on it.
"We have two non-Chipotle growth seeds open now - ShopHouse and Pizzeria Locale - and have noted before that the Chipotle model could be applied to a wide variety of foods," Arnold told The Business Insider. The "Chipotle model" actually refers to the chain's highly customizable menu and counter service.
The "Better Burger" chain would likely still be like Chipotle in terms of look and function, but they shall now serve burgers and fries instead of burritos and tacos. They would now be probable competitors of Five Guys and Shake Shack because of this major move. At some point, the fans rejoiced because of this news. Although a lot of members of the restaurant industry are sceptical about this change because of the previous E. coli outbreaks that badly stained the company's sales and such.
"The burger business might be the restaurant industry's toughest market to crack at this point. It's certainly tougher than either tacos or pizza, given the presence of so many 'better burger' chains like Five Guys, Smashburger, Shake Shack, and the Habit Burger Grill," wrote Jonathan Maze at Nation's Restaurant News.
In the words of some analysts, the chain's sales may not recover for years despite the fact that the brand has been spending millions of dollars on free burrito promotions just to bring back their customers who have a turned their backs from them since the E. coli issue.
