Chipotle Market Segmentation and Product Strategy
Introduction
Chipotle Mexican Grill is one the fastest growing restaurant businesses in the United States. Chipotle Mexican Grill was founded by the current CEO, Steve Ells, in 1993. Chipotle headquarters are located at 1401 Wynkoop Street, Denver, Colorado 80202. The company operates in the restaurant industry and more specifically the fast casual Mexican restaurant market.
Market Segmentation Analysis
Chipotle Mexican Grill is a fast casual Mexican Restaurant that operates from the United States. Although the restaurant is specifically segmented to the fast casual Mexican restaurant market, it does not simply operate in this realm. Chipotle is also successful operating in the restaurant market as well. According to the Trefis Team (2014) Chipotle Mexican Grill has managed to take market share from restaurants in the fast food industry.
In 2012, the restaurant industry was a $435 billion dollar industry (Tristano, 2013).This amounts to a very large market that Chipotle has the opportunity to capture. In that same year the casual Mexican restaurant market totaled a whopping $31 billion in sales (Tristano, 2013). This was a 13% increase for the casual Mexican restaurant market and only amounted to 7% of the entire restaurant market. According to Tristano’s (2013) research, Chipotle Mexican Grill was the second fastest growing fast casual restaurant of all the fast casual restaurant markets in 2012.
The Trefis Team (2014)
As demonstrated in Exhibit 1 on page 143, the company’s total revenue increased from $1.085.782 million dollars to $3.214.591 million dollars in less than seven years. Beginning at the end of 2007 through the end of 2013, Chipotle’s Mexican Grill total revenues increased at a CAGR of 19.83%. The new provided catering program, the six elements of their strategy adapted to other cuisines (ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen) and the growing number of new restaurants are decisive aspects in increasing revenue yearly.
First off, Qdoba provides many more options on its menu than Chipotle. For example, kids have four options on
A wide variety of food and a part of the community versus which is healthier which are things that need to be considered when choosing what to eat. Chick-fil-a is a unique restaurant because chicken is the only meat on a meat-based menu. Chipotle, while not unique, is very good for the few items they make. Both restaurants are so good it is hard to choose which to go
Chipotle’s organizational structure is centered on the functional structure. The top levels of management include the co-CEOs, CFO, Head-Media Relations, and Chief Creative and Development Officer CCDO (Chipotle). Chipotle is a smaller corporation relative to its competitors, which allows it to focus on a vertical hierarchy based on functions. The fact that there are few departments demonstrates that Chipotle is still a growing corporation. Chipotle is a highly centralized corporation as all of its stores are corporate owned and they must follow the rules set by the corporate headquarters this involves the same menu throughout the country and the same prices. The restaurant business follows high levels of formalization a set of guidelines must be followed in order to comply with food and health regulations. There is low division of labor at the restaurant level as those cooking can shift to serving and cleaning when needed, allowing the allocation of labor to match whatever is needed in the situation. A unique aspect of Chipotle’s upper management is the fact that there are two CEOs (Feloni). The two CEO help ease job functions and enables them to be more accessible. Another managerial aspect of Chipotle is the through the position of restaurateur. There are 183 of these positions and they work to manage several Chipotles, bringing management close to each store (Investor’s Business Daily). From their organizational structure we can see they place high importance on
The company had run a national TV commercial which named “Back to the Start” during the Grammy Awards. Chipotle also had published their food, restaurant concept and business through favorable articles and television programs. Moreover, Chipotle used video and music programs as well as event strategy to attract the consumers’ attention to their restaurants. The company also initiated promotional activities via newly opened restaurants to attract more consumers. Chipotle introduced a reward program, the “Farm Team” to encourage more customers to join a program that educated them something related to Chipotle Mexican Grill business concept. In addition, the word-of-mouth publicity from customers enable Chipotle to reduce the cost of advertising but at the same time increasing the brand reputation of the restaurants in the
The actions taken by Chipotle after the E.coli outbreak can be seen as both exacerbating the problem and finding ways to resolve the problem. However, as the crisis began, leadership coming from CEO Steve Ells and Co-CEO Monty Moran painted a picture of denial. One of the first decisions made in reaction the crisis was to purchase full-paid advertisements. This marketing tactic was done to mask the severity of the e-coli outbreak, sooth investors, and retain loyal customers. In addition to television advertisements, Chipotle decided to advertise using direct mail (Wahba, 2016). This practice does not correlate with traditional chipotle advertising; their last paid advertisement was in 2012. Chipotle has always operated in a fashion that let
The Fast food industry is extremely competitive. Although Chipotle is a step up from most fast food restaurants, it still must
In the year of 2005, the total revenue of Chipotle was $627.7 Million dollars. "Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (CMG-$53.50 a share) was a January spin-off with an initial public offering price of $22 -- from McDonald's, the largest retailer of hamburger buns in the world. By year-end 2004, CMG had 387 locations, generated $470 million in revenues and earned 21 cents a share."(Berko) Last year, CMG had 485 locations that produced $627.70 million the growth revenue was at 33.40% in 2005. "pushing tacos, burritos, salads, plus huge helpings of tired rice and boring beans reporting net income of 78 cents a share. This year, CMG expects to earn 71 cents a share and, according to Prudential Securities, CMG will report $1 billion in 2007 revenues (that's a lot of beans) and post higher earnings of 98 cents a share." (Berko) Although Chipotle is at an all time high I believe that it may well be trading its shares at to high of a price. Mcdonalds the best and most efficiently run profitable fast food restaurant is trading their shares at 17 times earnings. Today Chipotle is trading at an outstanding $56.07 Per share. I don't believe Chipotle is worth anything over $30 a share. Although the price of chipotle stock is too high there should still be a hefty revenue at year end 2007. Predictions suggest 1 Billion dollars. For 2005
Chipotle has opened their stores in few countries such as the UK, the US, Canada, Germany and France. It is now time for the corporation to follow the lead from other companies like Yum. Brands such as KFC and Taco Bell as well as McDonalds expand their footprint in the Asian market like Japan. For example, Chipotle operates less than 2,000 restaurants in only 5 countries, while McDonalds operates more than 35,000 restaurants in 119 countries, and Taco Bell, another Mexican restaurant, operates 6,500 restaurants in 20 countries which shows that the Chipotle could do better if it expands its business.
Chipotle’s kitchen and restaurant design intentionally places employees up front to reinforce a focus on service, through interaction with customers and individual attention by creating one burrito at a time (Chipotle, 2011, p. 5). While Chipotle combines basic ingredients to magnify the flavor they also stick to the basics when staffing their restaurants. Chipotle only has two shifts and cross trains their
The Chipotle Mexican Grille opened its first store in 1993 beginning a new category in the restaurant industry known as “fast casual” (About Us, 2014). This new category featured the “highest quality raw ingredients, classic cooking methods, and distinctive interior design-features that are more frequently found in the world of fine dining.” However, aside from the normally long wait in lines, an order could be taken and served in only a couple minutes. Currently Chipotle operates more than 1,500 restaurants internationally. The following pages will present a balanced approach to the effectiveness of Chipotle’s strategy analyzing financial performance, customer satisfaction, employee/learning and growth, and internal process.
re strong competitors and Yum! Foods leads the industry it is my recommendation that any investments be made in Chipotle.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. is a “fast-food service restaurant” under limited service category. It was formed in 1993 and went public in 2006. It has the largest market share in the Mexican-type food segment with a net income of more than
Chipotle first opened in Denver in 1993 with a simple idea behind it, “food served fast didn’t have to be “fast-food” experience”, (Chipotle Mexican Grill, 2015). Prior to CEO Steve Ellis opening the restaurant chain, he himself was a chef. Since its creation, Chipotle has become a phenomenon in the restaurant industry and has experienced tremendous growth since it went public in 2006 with over 1,600 restaurants in Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, with the majority located in the United States (Chipotle Mexican Grill, 2015).
Steve Ells is the founder and CEO of Chipotle. Steve is a trained chef and opened his first Chipotle store in 1993 at a former Dolly Madison ice cream store in Denver, Colorado. His goal was to serve high quality, delicious food quickly and in a “fast-casual” setting (Ells).