Chipotle Goes Meta With Roblox Restaurant

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s (NYSE: CMG) newest restaurant went meta, giving new meaning to the word digital.

The Newport Beach-based chain is the latest Orange County company to expand to the metaverse, a virtual world inhabited by the avatars of real people, with a new restaurant using Roblox Corp.’s (NYSE: RBLX) platform.

The chain, with almost 2,900 restaurants in real life and a market cap of $50 billion, erected a “Boorito Maze” specifically for the Halloween weekend. Fans that navigated the maze were able to win virtual items. The first 30,000 users who went to the restaurant’s cashier each day received a code to redeem for a real Chipotle burrito.

Despite a widespread outage on Roblox that began on Oct. 28, the restaurant racked more than 8,300 likes. Chipotle’s Roblox as of last Monday had more than 2.7 million visits as the chain continues to bolster a digital sales channel that generated $840.4 million in third-quarter sales.  

Chipotle joins several OC companies taking their brands to the metaverse to remain relevant with their target audience.

Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc.’s parent Hyundai Motor created the Hyundai Mobility Adventure on Roblox. Vans Inc. also created a virtual world where consumers can create their own boards and shoes, while having their avatars skateboard. And, in June, Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California LLC began offering PacSun gear for users’ avatars.