What Is Chipotle Core Competencies

Chipotle is a leading company in the growing fast-casual dining market. Established by C.E.O Steve Ells in Denver, Colorado in 1993, Chipotle soon made an impression on its customers by providing food with high-quality raw ingredients and classic cooking methods to create great tasting, reasonably priced dishes that are readily served to customer’s within minutes after being ordered. The food Chipotle offers is simple and includes burritos, burrito bowls, tacos and salads, plus soft drink, fruit drinks, beer, and milk. However, customers can customize their own options including different meats, beans, rice and vegetables. They keep an assembly line setup in all of their restaurants which helps cut down on time/resources when helping customers. They also keep a small amount of choices to ensure fresh and high quality meals.

Chipotle currently has 1,783 stores worldwide. With international locations such as Canada and London, Chipotle is soon to be all around the globe. They have managed to enter into these international markets without changing their menu, business model, or marketing strategy. So their growth isn’t surprising given their strong core competencies:

Creating an operationally efficient restaurant with an aesthetically pleasing and distinctive interior

With their high quality foods, with sustainably-sourced ingredients Chipotle captures the Whole Foods, health-conscious, fitness-craze, and Starbucks crowd who are willing to pay a premium for good food on the go. This strength goes directly against much fast-food chain’s major weakness: healthy, tasty food. McDonalds has been in a long slide with loss of market share, and they've just announced a major effort to offer healthy food, not just "healthier", but actually "healthy", so they're responding to a major shift in consumer behavior and to the threat of Chipotle and other healthy