Chipotle Competitors – Know More

Chipotle Mexican Grill Incorporated, popularly called Chipotle, is a fast-serving chain of Restaurants that specializes in serving Mexican cuisine like bowls, salads, tacos, and burritos. Chipotle is popular for using the freshest ingredients, ethically sourced meat and veggies, and allowing customers to choose the ingredients for the Taco or burrito. Currently, Chipotle serves in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, and the UK. Let’s know about Chipotle Competitors.

Chipotle Competitors

Operating in the casual serve style restaurant market, they face a large number of competitors. They not only face competition from other Mexican food outlets but also other quick-serve-casual-dine restaurants. Some of the key competitors of chipotle are Qdoba Mexican Eats, Taco Bell, Burger King and other fast food restaurants.

Chipotle Competitors

1)Qdoba Mexican Eats

Qdoba Mexican eats have been marketing itself as an authentic Mexican food place. They have been deeply focused on building a strong and loyal fanbase. With a wide variety of Mexican foods and dishes on its menu, Qdoba is said to be one of its biggest competitors of Chipotle.

Currently operating at over 700 locations for 15 years, Qdoba was bought by Apollo in 2019, and they now operate on the franchise model.

2) Baja Fresh Mexican Grill

Baja Fresh is another Mexican food outlet, currently operated and franchised by the MTV food group along with La Salsa Fresh Mexican.

Baja Fresh greatest market advantage was functioning together with La Salsa, their use of farm-fresh ingredients always keeps the customers coming.

3) Taco Bell

Taco Bell is a huge multination fast serve restaurant chain, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands Incorporated. They also own Pizza Hut and KFC. With over 7000 restaurants worldwide, Taco Bell serves multiple Mexican and Mexican-inspired dishes like Custom burritos, tacos, burrito bowls nachos, and Mexican salads. 

Upon switching to higher quality ingredients, Taco Bell has emerged as a huge competitor of Chipotle, while chipotle is still a small franchise compared to Taco Bell.

4) Rubio’s Coast Grill

Emerged as one of the first Mexican restaurant chains, the company has, however, not quite reached the mark that Chipotle has. The restaurant chain did dominate the market before the emergence of other players, but they have been trying to up their game by introducing various other dishes like seafood. Although struggling currently, the company holds strong potential to compete with chipotle in the long run.

5) McDonald’s

McDonald’s has been dominating the fast-food industry with its iconic burgers and shakes. Although McDonald’s is not a Mexican food outlet, it still holds a strong brand name in the restaurant business.

Operating in over a hundred countries and over 36000 locations worldwide, McDonald’s has a huge potential of capturing chipotle’s customer base.

6) Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s has established its brand name synonymous with the famous Italian dish, ‘pizza’. With over 14,000 restaurants operating globally, Domino’s is the world’s second-largest pizza place.

With a huge customer base worldwide, domino’s too poses a great threat to chipotle’s customer base.

7) Burger King

Another fast-food behemoth is burger king. Operating worldwide, known only next to McDonald’s for serving the giant whoppers that compete closely with McDonald’s Big Mac.

Burger King has been continuously innovating their serving style as well as its online delivery styles. Along with their already loyal fan base worldwide, burger king has a significant competitive advantage over Chipotle.

8) Chick-fil-A

This unique restaurant chain, is hugely popular in the US, especially for its chicken sandwiches. Operating at over 2800 locations across 47 states in the US, chick-fil-A also has operations in Canada, South Africa, and the UK.

Chick-fil-A’s huge popularity makes it a fan favorite and poses a massive threat to chipotle.

9) Moe’s Southwest Grill

This restaurant chain is a part of Focus Brands and has popularised itself as the place of authentic Mexican food. They also offer items named after famous movie stars along with the classic Tacos, burritos, bowls, nachos, quesadillas, and more.

With over 700 operational stores, they are a fierce competitor of chipotle.

10) Starbucks

The most iconic coffee brand, an Instagram favorite for freshly brewed coffee. Starbucks is a world-famous coffee brand with over 30,000 locations in over eighty-three countries.

Starbucks has a variety of food dishes, that can potentially steal chipotle’s customers, along with their already loyal customer base.

Conclusion

The restaurant business is full of fierce competition. With an ever-growing demand for Mexican food, Chipotle’s surely has built a name for themselves in the casual serve style restaurants and among the people as the place for getting their favorite tacos and stuffed burritos.

With the surge of Hispanic culture in the US, Chipotle has done a great job at tapping into the market at the right time. However, they do not hold a significant market share in the Mexican food casual serve restaurant business. With great competitors in the market, it is interesting to note what the company will introduce to expand its customer base, both in the US and outside. 

Chipotle Competitors – Know More

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