“We have cilantro-lime cauliflower rice now.”
So simple, and yet Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s (NYSE: CMG) Jan. 4 tweet announcing the item’s official limited-time entry onto its menus helped garner over 500 retweets and more than 10,000 likes the day of the launch.
Chipotle tied the launch to people’s affinity to the start of a new year, pitching the menu item as Keto, Whole30, Paleo, vegan and vegetarian friendly. That’s a mouthful.
The addition tacks on an extra $2 to each dish and is available in one of Chipotle’s over 2,700 restaurants, the app, its website and third-party delivery platforms.
The launch follows an earlier test of the rice in the Denver and Wisconsin markets in what Chipotle calls its “stage-gate process”—bizspeak for market research and testing before launching nationally.
The test showed about a third of orders with cilantro-lime cauliflower rice came from either new or infrequent Chipotle customers. Even before the testing, cilantro-lime cauliflower rice was in demand, Chipotle said, with 1 out of 3 requests being for the rice.
Shares of OC’s second-largest public company by market value are up more than 50% over the past year.
