Chipotle,
Starbucks, and In-N-Out don’t see their “secret menus” as secrets at
all, but they represent a sea change in fast-food philosophy.
It’s noon on a Tuesday. I walk into a crowded Chipotle, and
I’m so anxious that my stomach is churning. Earlier that day, I’d come
across something called a quesarito, which is a full-blown Chipotle
burrito wrapped inside a quesadilla, a 1,540-calorie fallen angel that one Redditor
had claimed was hiding deep within Chipotle’s secret menu. So I say the
word--“quesarito”--half-expecting to be laughed out of the restaurant.
Instead, the girl’s eyes open wide, like she’s seen a yeti. Then her
face goes deadpan.
“We don’t have that.”
“You don’t? But it seems like … maybe you do?”
An urgent smile betrays her. “No, but if we did have it, it wouldn’t be between the hours of noon and one.”
It was only then that I realized my horrendous faux pas. Like Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut,
my first steps into a decadent clandestine society had been both naive
and far too public. A moment later, it was as if the topic was never
broached. I ordered a mere chicken burrito and quickly ate it in shame.
Meanwhile, my hunger for the elusive quesarito only grew.
Two days later, I’m on the phone with Chipotle’s communications
director, Chris Arnold. I waste no time. I need to know. I ask him about
the quesarito. “I don’t know what that is, and I’ve been here a very
long time,” he assures me. “There is no secret Chipotle menu.”
I’m still not sure if he’s lying to me, but I like Arnold
immediately. Unlike most big corporate chains I’ve spoken to, nothing
he’s telling me is filtering through a legal department or some paranoid
suit. And when he talks about burritos, cheese, and salsa, I can almost
hear him salivating through the phone, just a bit, just like I am.
But a nice guy or not, I’d need to break him. I knew the quesarito
existed--it had to. If this took an hour, then so be it. If this took a
week, so be it. If this took my career, so be it. I’d seen Zero Dark Thirty,
and I was going to ride Arnold until the truth spilled out like bean
juice from an improperly wrapped tortilla. “Another reporter from St.
Louis was asking about it,” he admits without prompting a second later,
“from the Riverfront Times.” With that, Arnold was ready to talk. And the conspiracy would go deeper than I could ever have predicted.
Animal Style
It is worth noting that the very concept of a secret menu is a bit
absurd. After all, why would a restaurant try to sell food that nobody
knew about? Case in point, In-N-Out’s secret menu--with options like
ordering fries “animal style”--has become the worst-kept secret in
America. Nowadays, they even post this menu on their site, calling it
the “not-so-secret menu” with total self-awareness.
But when I ask them about it, even In-N-Out denies its existence.
“We don’t consider any of the items commonly referred to as 'secret
menu’ items to be part of a separate or ‘secret’ menu. In fact, we don’t
see ourselves as having a ‘secret menu’ at all," In-N-Out VP Carl Van
Fleet writes. “The, so called, ‘secret menu’ items are simply variations
in methods of preparation for our basic menu items. We only serve
burgers, fries, and drinks and we’ve always made each burger exactly the
way a customer orders it.”
Interestingly enough, In-N-Out admits to inventing the name “double
double,” but Van Fleet says they have no clue who first coined the term
“animal style,” which began popping up in their stores as early as the
1970s. "We truly never sat in the office and decided to name variations
on our burgers," he promises. And it was only in the last decade that
someone--”not from In-N-Out”--began saying they had a secret menu at
all.
No doubt, the press has been nothing but a good thing for In-N-Out.
Even if they didn’t coin it, the secret menu has become nearly
synonymous with the burger chain. It’s fun, like an inside joke that the
whole world is in on. And you only have to peruse In-N-Out’s website to
spot an added benefit of promoting a menu that’s not a real menu: In
states like California, nutrition information for every item on their
menu board is disclosed for legal reasons. But most of these “secret”
menu items--full of burgers stacked four tall and fatty foods slathered
in delicious thousand island dressing--are immune to current disclosure
laws.
"For example, if a customer orders their burger with ketchup instead
of our spread, or if they order their cheeseburger with an extra slice
of cheese, we don’t (and are not required to) list calories for that
variation," Van Fleet confirms. "Basically, since the so-called 'secret
menu’ items are just variations of our basic menu items, that is how
they are treated." Notably, In-N-Out discloses the nutrition information
of its carb-light “protein style” burgers but no other
"not-so-secret-menu" variations.
Back on the phone with Chipotle, Chris Arnold spills it. “We have
800,000 customers a day, all of whom order different things,” he says,
referring to my secret super burrito. “Unless it’s an issue for guys
like you, it doesn’t come across my department.”
Over the next few minutes, we browse this popular Ranker page
together, and Arnold checks off the things that Chipotle could
plausibly make on the list. While he maintains that the restaurant has
no formalized secret menu, he admits that two off-menu items we see have
become extremely popular, even in Chipotle’s own offices: nachos and
quesadillas. [Note: A quesadilla actually is on the kid’s menu now.]
What’s particularly odd, however, is that the line’s machinery isn’t
really customized to make either. Without a flat-top grill, quesadillas
are typically made in the low-temperature tortilla press (and there are
generally only one to three presses per Chipotle, which can lead to
backups during busy hours). Without a broiler, nacho cheese can’t really
be melted, but employees can get close by ordering the toppings so the
cheese sits directly on top of hot beans.
Despite their popularity, neither nachos nor quesadillas are inside
any Chipotle operations manual. Instead, employees teach one another the
popular off-menu requests through a sort of “oral history.” And
Chipotle engineered a side-based menu for custom requests that’s
“flexible enough to meet the sorts of requests we get from customers,
but not enough to game the system.” Anywhere from one to three sides can
be ordered at various tiers of cost. Everything is treated the same to
make checkouts quick, save for meat, which always counts as two sides.
If a customer orders something with four or more sides, managers have
authority to just roll that order into a burrito or any other menu item
it most closely resembles. “Pricing is structured to be flexible,
because our restaurants are structured to be flexible,” he explains. “We
essentially have four things on our menu, but there are more than
60,000 ways you can put things together.”
The sentiment is remarkably similar to what Starbucks tells me when I
inquire about their secret menu I’d spotted through Googling. (In terms
of search-engine optimization, In-N-Out, Chipotle, and Starbucks top
the secret menu list.) Starbucks denies any secret menu, too, but just
like Chipotle (and to a lesser extent, In-N-Out), they consider any
ingredient they have in the store to be fair game, offering “more than
170,000 ways baristas can customize beverages.” They’ve set up pricing
for modifications like soy milk and protein powder, but more basic
requests like extra foam or extra syrup are on the house--just like
Chipotle will let you add every salsa they’ve got to a burrito bowl
without nickel-and-diming you.
These customizable burritos, burgers, and beverages might not seem
like a very big deal. But compare this trend with fast food of
yesteryear--heck, compare it to the McDonald’s or Burger King of today.
Fast food has changed and we’ve barely noticed. Chipotle specifically
isn’t trying to sell us on a Big Mac, a single creation built for
universal appeal, but a mosaic of complementary flavors that can be
mixed and matched without consequence. “I think of it as the customer’s
the brand manager,” Arnold says. “The experience of the public is
something different for everyone, like an iPod in a way. How many
billions and billions of iPods are in circulation, and yet no two
[playlists] are alike. You buy a burrito, I buy a burrito. We pay the
same thing for it, and they’re two very different things.”
I made another run at the elusive quesarito at 3 p.m. one afternoon.
There was only one other soul eating at my local Chipotle, while a
skeleton crew manned the line. Perfect.
But this time, when I requested that elusive
burrito-wrapped-in-a-meal, the man behind the counter legitimately had
no idea what I was asking for. There were no coy smiles, no winks and
nods. Just cluelessness and an openness to burn some clock and make my
quesarito dreams come true. After several minutes--literally--of
negotiating the ins and outs of what, in my mind’s eye, a Chipotle
quesarito entailed, he sandwiched two tortillas around a thick pile of
shredded cheese and tossed them into the press.
"If this looks good, I’m making one for myself later," he said.
The quesadilla looked innocent enough as it was topped with chicken,
rice, beans, and a variety of salsas. But it was when the Creator tried
to actually roll the quesarito that I began to understand its mass. With
a restrained grunt, he gave up on any semblance of finesse and just
shoved the super burrito into an undersized piece of tinfoil, a pig in a
mylar blanket.
I paid--$12.87 with a figure-friendly Diet Coke--and lifted the
quesarito from the counter for the first time. It was the weight of a
small animal, bending its red plastic cage with a hunger to break free. I
took a seat and unwrapped the foil, cautiously. I was greeted by a
freak of dairy fats and carbohydrates, a sticky, glistening, leaking,
bulbous food monster. An employee, wiping down an already clean table in
my quiet corner, gave up any pretense of work to watch my first bite.
“That’s a knife and forker,” he said. I stared him down like a lion
claiming the first taste of a fallen gazelle, then picked it up with my
bare hands. The flavor? Not like any Chipotle burrito you know. It was
like a two-pound cheese-stuffed croissant, absorbing all that addictive
acidic tang that defines Chipotle and swapping it for pure unctuousness.
I can’t describe the minutes (or hours?) that followed. But for the
first time in my entire history of burrito consumption, I actually
couldn’t finish what was on my plate.
The quesarito had bested me. Long live the quesarito.
No comments:
Post a Comment