How Chipotle Made Every College Student Ditch Their Pants

Chipotle Mexican Grill has just gotten a little more awesome. If that’s possible.

College students and stoners alike can forget donning pants late at night when a Chipotle craving strikes. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, following a call with analysts, Chipotle announced their partnership with Postmates to bring their burritos to your front door. Postmates, an app-based delivery service, hires independent contractors to perform deliveries, similar to Uber or Buddytruck. Chipotle is the second major deal the delivery service struck recently.

Re/cost reports Chipotle delivery is available in over two dozen metro areas, and orders can be placed through the Postmates app or website. You can order Chipotle in any of the cities in which Postmates operates. The restaurant’s chief creative officer, according to a transcript of the call, said many other services tried delivering Chipotle in the past.

“And we’ve tried to in a lot of cases shut them down, because we weren’t sure whether the quality was going to be sufficient or whether they were following our rules. This is different because we’ve made an official deal with Postmates and they have been delivering Chipotle for quite a while, too.”

That is, if you can afford the high price tag. According to a Postmates spokeswoman, the fees to deliver your Chipotle start at $4.99 and can go as high as $7.99 per order based on your area, the New York Times reports. The price of your Chipotle burrito remains the same, however, there’s some discrepancy in the actual price to deliver your dinner. New York City-based Jason Del Rey writes”I just tried to order an $8 Chipotle burrito from Postmates and was told it would cost $20 with delivery and service fees.”

The deal looks like a good one for both Chipotle and Postmates. Mark Crumpacker, Chipotle’s chief marketing and development officer, said they’ve experienced a 30 percent growth each month since the start of the deal. Chipotle recently posted a 20.4 percent increase in sales, bringing their first-quarter sales to $1.09 billion. Profits soared 47.6 percent to 122.6 million, bolstered, in part, by online ordering, which accounted for 6.6 percent of the restaurant’s sales during the first quarter of this year.

“We are very proud of our start to 2015, as our average sales volume reached a record $2.5 million per restaurant,” Steve Ells, Chipotle Mexican Grill’s co-chief executive, said in a statement.

The deal struck between Chipotle and Postmates comes on the heels of Starbuck’s decision to partner with the San Francisco-based delivery start-up. Postmates has slogged its way to expanding into other cities, and a high-profile deal with giants like Chipotle will only increase its visibility.

The popularity of Chipotle is due in part to its commitment to source only ethically-raised meat. The restaurant’s pork woes have been widely reported. Last January, Chipotle pulled pork from one-third of its establishments following sub-standard meat from a major supplier. Now that you can have Chipotle delivered, it’s bound to become even more popular.

Chipotle has recently been in the news for serving Hillary Clinton, who, according to a recent article on the Inquisitr, isn’t much of a tipper, according to a restaurant manager. Clinton visited a Chipotle in Ohio, apparently incognito, and failed to leave a tip after paying for her meal. Maybe she’ll tip her Postmates driver better.

(Image via Scott Olson/Getty Images News)