I like the chain, and eat at several of them regularly. For a while, I thought they simply didn’t supply spoons, only forks and (sometimes) knives.
Then, at one location, I noticed a sign at the condiments counter saying that they had spoons available on request at the cash register. I’ve since observed the same arrangement at other locations.
Why would they do this? Qdoba (Chipotle’s mirror-image chain) doesn’t seem to. Are there other fast food chains that do?
Just a WAG, but if I were the kind of person who would grab extra disposable utensils from restaurants for later use, I would take spoons because they are the most versatile and useful.
How does Chipotles feel about sporks?
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Another WAG: When silver/plasticware is available, many people grab it automatically, rather than thinking about what utensil(s) they really need in order to eat the particular food they have. Since Chipotle doesn’t sell much that requires a spoon to eat, having lots of people take spoons that they weren’t going to use would be wasteful.
That’s what I was thinking when I saw the title. I’ll bet if you watch, when people are grabbing utensils as they leave (for carry out), some will grab a handful of forks and even knives and 10 or 15 napkins when all they really need is one fork and 2 or 3 napkins. Since you don’t really need a spoon for much, this cuts it down a little bit.
At my store, I’ll see people grab 2 or 3 forks with a sandwich or come in, buy nothing at all and leave with 10 coffee creamers. I’d be willing to bet all of these people have a drawer full of plastic ware/napkins/PC condiments and salad dressings from restaurants. You’re not really getting ahead if you’re just hoarding them instead of using them and a lot of people fail to realize that all that stuff actually does cost us money. I have to drive to the supply store and hand some a bunch of dollar bills for a box of plastic forks. I don’t do it so that you can take 8 of them for you $2 pasta salad. [yes, it bugs me]
Another thought, they may also be doing it because they don’t have enough spots for forks, knives, spoons and anything else so they had to remove one and/or people may have been annoyed at getting home and find they grabbed a spoon instead of a fork. I think I’ve done that once or twice at Chipotle.
You want to know why I grab so many forks? They are so cheap they break after a few jabs at your food. I’d rather have a few extra forks than try to eat with half of a fork.
In my experience, any question along the lines of “why does this restaurant do X instead of Y?” can be answered by “they think it’ll save money”.
My question would be why Chipotles even has spoons at all. I guess that it’s better to have a few in the back just in case someone asks for one than to have to say no to even the rare customer who asks for one.
I usually order a burrito bowl, with brown rice, black beans, pico de gallo, habanero and lettuce.
The only thing that doesn’t go better with a spoon is the lettuce, and the chicken or steak. I guess that makes me rare.
Word. I remember reading years ago of an airline that served one less olive on the salad of each in-flight meal. It saved them tens of thousands of dollars.
This is almost undoubtedly why the Chipotle locations that the OP has seen are doing it. They may have had spoons out in the open in the past, found that customers were taking large numbers of them, and decided to save a few dollars by reining it in.