How can you ask for more? You’d be greedy to want a restaurant to decorate its cups and sacks any better than this: printing the words of famous writers writing specifically to be read by someone eating a burrito.
Some of the great writers (and comedians) in the world are freelancing for Chipotle now.
It’s like an issue of The New Yorker cut up and pasted all over the restaurant.
“Curated” by Jonathan Safran Foer, whose book Eating Animals shows his clear sympathies with the mission of Chipotle’s founder, this is pretty win-win-win. The authors get to insert their thinking into the brains of people who might typically just spend their visit Instagramming their burrito; and Chipotle gets the reflected glow of Important Thoughts, which fits their brand nicely and extends their run of trying very non-advertisingy ways to promote their restaurant.
And we get to see what Bill Hader, Toni Morrison, Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow and George Saunders would say if you handed them a sack and a pen.
Starbucks did feature “The Way I See It” on their cups awhile back, of course, and it was great and fit their brand perfectly, too.
Still. The more deep thoughts we can introduce into the dining public’s consciousness—and conscience—that aren’t just more promotional lines or punning sales points, the better. Taking advantage of “anything that gets printed” is, by the way, something I talk about in my book, where I happen to feature Chipotle’s old sacks, which have imaginative but purely promotional copy on them. I like what they’re doing here tons better. Don’t you?
