Beginning today, and continuing for four months, Chipotle will switch from its iconic silver foil to gold foil for its burritos.
The gold foil is meant to draw attention to what Chipotle calls Food With Integrity. This includes sourcing naturally raised meats, local and organically grown produce, and dairy products that are made with milk from cows that are not treated with the synthetic hormone rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone).
“It’s been nearly 18 years since I opened the first Chipotle,” said founder, chairman and co-CEO Steve Ells. “Since the very first day, I have always looked for the best ingredients I could find. But as it turns out, even our most loyal customers don’t always know about the lengths we go to in order to source the best ingredients. So we decided to do something that would really grab their attention.”
“Traditionally an 18th anniversary is celebrated with porcelain, but that clearly wouldn’t have worked,” said Mark Crumpacker, the company’s chief marketing officer. “So we opted for gold. It’s a lot easier to wrap around the burritos and let’s face it, it’s pretty stylish in a 70’s sort of way.”
What’s ‘iconic’ about aluminum foil? Can we please stop over using that word?
I think when you wrap 100 million or so burritos in tin foil and also use that image of a tin tube in all your ads for years on end, then “iconic” is a solid word choice.
all sorts of burritos are wrapped in tin foil. show me a burrito wrapped foil and i think about lots of burrito places, not just chipotle. i think that using ‘iconic’ was a mistake.