Do you love Chipotle's huge, environmentally conscious burritos, but hate walking along the counter to order? Do you often find yourself craving barbacoa soft tacos, but shuddering at the thought of getting off your couch? Do you smoke a lot of weed?
You're in luck. This week, Chipotle announced (deep within the company's first-quarter earnings call) a new partnership with food delivery app Postmates that brings home delivery to Chipotle locations in 66 cities across the country. That means that if you live in one of those cities, you can now get Chipotle burritos without ever leaving your house.
Technically speaking, you could get Chipotle delivery from Postmates before this announcement. The app is really less of a traditional food delivery platform like Seamless or GrubHub than it is a food-focused courier service. San Francisco-based Postmates works with drivers who will go to any restaurant, order takeout and bring it to you, for a fairly hefty fee. So plenty of people have already used it to get Chipotle: Re/Code reports that $500,000 worth of Chipotle food was delivered via the service in the first quarter of this year.
But here's the rub: Only restaurants that have partnered with Postmates have menus and detailed logistical information, like hours, readily available on the app. To order food from an out-of-network restaurant, you have to type in the menu items you want individually, and you have no idea how much the bill's going to be. Sometimes, the restaurant you're trying to order from will even be closed -- a major bummer.
Chipotle's new partnership with Postmates eliminates those issues completely. It's now very easy to order Chipotle on the app. It is not, however, cheap. A carnitas burrito with guacamole that would cost $9.10 ordered in-store at a Chipotle in Los Angeles would cost $15.42 if delivered about half a mile using Postmates, once the 9 percent service fee and $5.50 delivery fee are added into the mix.
Still, Chipotle is not the first chain to partner with the company. Starbucks recently announced its own partnership with Postmates, which will bring delivery to customers in selected cities on a trial basis at the end of this year. From the chains' perspective, this makes a lot of sense: Postmates takes care of all the logistics, so it's incredible easy on their end. Starting a delivery service from scratch, as Burger King is attempting to do, requires a lot more effort, time and risk.
Plus, there are obviously quite a few people who'd gladly pay a few extra bucks to have their food brought to them. Maybe almost as many people as are willing to pay $1.80 to get guacamole on their Chipotle burrito.
Related
Before You Go
