FAN: Chipotle Needs Process ReEngineering

Take a good look at this picture. I thought I was gonna have to paint a picture with words for this rant but I plugged "Chipotle Mexican Grill" into Google Images and behold - I got more than I expected.

I'm a simple man. A little odd, yes. A little direct, yes, but I work a certain way. A predictable way. Things should make sense to me. Inefficiencies suck. Call me crazy. I only spilled the contents of a bagless vacuum on the freshly vacuumed carpet once. It's woven into my fabric. When things annoy me, I look for and find better ways to do them. It's why I do what I do for a living. There is no better job for me than to find fault with things.

I hate salad bars. Hate them! I love salad. Dilemma! Why don't I like salad bars? How much time do you have? They're basically a mess. We love Ruby Tuesday's salad bar....at certain times of the day. If you get there shortly after they open or before the dinner rush, it's much better. By "much better" I mean "much cleaner". I don't like hard boiled egg pieces in my beets. It must be the presentation thing for me. Yes, I'm going to mix all those things together in my own salad, but I don't want the grape that the snot nosed kid touched and put back. You feel me? I don't like it when the stainless steel parts between the crocks are so full of old stuff it looks like a rather large person sneezed a hurricane. I don't want the oily mess from a pasta salad dripping on the carrots. My wife had to get "kitchen certified" to be the administrator of an assisted living once. She learned all kinds of creepy things about salad bars. TIP: Pass on the spinach and sprouts.

So, that was a little background. On to Chipotle. I love Chipotle Mexican Grill. A quick affordable lunch much better than Taco Bell. I haven't been in a Taco Bell in 10 years - maybe longer. With the advent of "fast casual" places like Chipotle's, Qdoba, Moe's and Baha Fresh - why would you? Of all those mentioned, Chipotle is my absolute favorite. Small menu, refillable Diet Coke, excellent burritos! Software geeks L-O-V-E burritos and caffeine. There's nothing like going back to the cube farm with some good belches lined up. I'll try to make this short. Maybe I'll email Chipotle myself, but as I'm coming through the line every time, and I prolly eat there once a week, I get those old salad bar feelings when I look at the sour cream. Why? There's typically corn salsa and cheese backstroking in it. I'm having the corn salsa and I'm having the cheese, so to get the sour cream is no huge deal to me, but for presentation purposes or if I had an aversion to corn and wanted sour cream, I'd pass.

Now look at the picture again. Imagine the section with the meat and beans is where you first order and then the secion with the salsas and toppings are right beside it. The worker is standing on the side of the sour cream. The corn salsa is closest to the customer as you walk down the board. I want the corn closer to the worker! If the worker doesn't have to navigate corn on a spoon going for a flyover of the sour cream.....no kernel can decide to commit cornicide and jump off said serving spoon. Genius! I just solved the age old problem of corn in the sour cream! I noticed it the second time I ate there. Now when I go, I just laugh at all the corn in the sour cream and wonder A. How did this come about? and B. Why is it still like that? I thought maybe it was just the one store I eat at for lunch but it's not. Our local one is set up the same way and this picture indicates that it's most likely this way at every location.

I know that swapping the corn and sour cream solves little as you'll just have the opposite effect of sour cream in the corn....but why do those buckets have to be that way? Use a thicker sour cream and it won't run off the spoon. Keep the same runny sour cream but put it in a squeezable bottle like ketchup. There are probably 100 different ways to get around this problem, but it's hard for me to understand why a national chain hasn't seen this as an issue yet and changed it. If that store opens at 11 AM, I guarantee you the first piece of corn flies into the white quicksand around 11:07. If Chipotle's was around and I worked there instead of Burger King when I was in high school - I would have solved that bugger on Day 2.

Don't you think one worker..somewhere..anywhere.. at 11:07 AM is saying "Damn! You there, you slippery hot kernel...YOU...will be the last kernel of corn that ever falls in the sour cream on MY watch!"