“Come by your local Chipotle this week and order any burrito for a dollar. As many as you can eat and we guarantee not one person will get sick,” Chipotle’s CEO and founder Steve Ells told Bloomberg Business News.
The dollar burrito campaign runs from Jan 18th to the 24th. #ChipotleBurritoWeek
In the unprecedented move by a fast food restaurant, Chipotle wants to return to consumers main staple place to eat out after a few bad months of health safety concerns. An e-Coli outbreak closed dozens of stores in the Northwest and a norovirus contraction closed a busy store in Boston.
Hundreds were sickened over this time, but no one died. Store revenues have dropped as much as 30% during this time period and the stock price is around $450 a share from a high of $800 in July. Lawsuits are now in the works over potentially misleading the shareholders.
Analysts commend the incredible value offer for $1 burritos. Ted Olson, an analyst at Luck Stocks, said, “While they’ll lose a little money for a week, it could be the jump-start needed to get back on track the quickest way possible. It will get casual and heavy consumes back through the doors instantly instead of slowly waiting over the next three, four months to regain their trust.
“Basically, Chipotle is buying your trust back with the dollar a burrito price point.”
Fans are also happy about the free guacamole that will be included in the $1 burrito week.
Susan Lilly, from Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune, “I’m super excited for the free guacamole! The dollar burritos are also awesome of course, but the free guac won back my heart, Chipotle.”
It looks like selling burritos at regular price and just losing the extra money from guacamole could have had the same effect, but we’ll never know.
Stock traders are anxiously waiting to see if the volume of burritos sold next week will indicate the publics trust being won over. The general feeling is that the strategy will work. “If Jack in the Box can come back from a sickness scandal in the nineties when people actually died, Chipotle should be able to bounce back to normal sales after the dollar burrito week,” said Olson. “This will eliminate any competitors from gaining any more market share and has the potential to gain even more consumers from McDonald and Burger King with the dollar price tag.”
The final question is ‘when will Chipotle begin selling nachos?’
