Analyze Chipotle‘s Management and Operation Problems (Essay Sample)

                                                                    Chipotle Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation                         Chipotle Chipotle Mexican Grill is one of the major leading fast food joints operating on the European and American markets. The restaurant has strategized policies that have helped in the improvement of their sales and achieving their financial obligation or target. Although most of these policies influenced the performance of Mexican Grill positively, some had a negative impact. These policies have enabled the restaurant to expand from a single unit business operator in Denver to a multi-operational restaurant that serves a large number of customer at a given time. Thus, the paper seeks to analyze Chipotle‘s management and operation problems and recommend practical solutions to improve its performance on the market Chipotle’s Strategies One of the strategized policies that had been laid out by the Mexican Grill management was the ability to operate under a menu that specializes to a limited number of food supplies with the exception of the situations where by alcoholic drinks and margarines were served in these restaurants (Wylie, 2009). However, customers were allowed to customize their food preferences and make special orders as long as they could be produced from available ingredients. Although the management had been given the role of considering additions into the menu, the menu had remained unchanged for many years. The strategy of menu originality and food preparation limitedness created efficiency in the restaurant that helped in cutting down the cost of operation. Another strategy was the ability of the restaurant to serve its customers quickly. This strategy enabled the customers to reduce the waiting time since they were able to order their desired meals from the waiters without wasting time. Orders placed through iPhones, online, and fax were manageable and accommodated without the interference of the in-store customer services. This enabled the restaurant to attract more customers due to the fast food experience (Paiz et al., 2011). Another Chipotle’s strategy was to offer quality food to its customers with great hospitality. This was primarily achieved by the cumulative use of naturally grown foodstuffs and animal products that were raised in accordance to the relevant welfare standards. For instance, cheese and sour cream purchased from Chipotle were made from cow milk free of recombinant bovine growth hormone (Paiz et al., 2011).  Apart from the quality food, food safety and quality assurance were highly monitored by the supply and chain mangers all along to the serving lines available in the company restaurants. Chipotle’s risk management and training department implemented and developed quality and safety standards for the operation in its restaurants. These safety standards ensured that the company and suppliers operated in compliance with the relevant local, state, and federal food safety guidelines. The management operations were separated from each other in terms of decision-making within each individual restaurant. Employees were also given a chance to make faster decisions that would enable them to satisfy the customers’ need without any delay. This strategy enabled the company to maintain its swift operation worldwide (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2012). On issues associated with the marketing of the restaurant, Chipotle Mexican Grill had a good budgetary allocation that was used to conduct advertisement, promotions campaigns, and TV shows to enhance its expansion and market dominance (Grant, 2016). In a move to reward the loyal customers, the respective restaurant managers issued special invitations such as the Farm Team to customers who were in close contact with the restaurant. On the issue regarding expansion and site selection, the company had strategized an internal management team for real estate agents who dealt with evaluating the potential sites for new restaurants (Augeneder, 2014). Apart from the geographic location of the restaurant, others factor such as surrounding trade, competitors, and the area business information were put into consideration before the site selection. Recommendations to Chipotle’s Leaders Recommendations presented to the senior leaders of Chipotle Mexican Grill attempt to boost their existing strategies. The Chipotle Mexican Grill management team worked well by using the strategies it had set up earlier. As much as the company performs better, still there some major key elements that the company needs to improve to earn a competitive advantage. For instance, the management of the organization will have to expand its menu by revising it so that it could accommodate to all sorts of customers’ needs in its region of operation since being limited to a specified menu limits the company operation to only a specific number of customers (Wylie, 2009). In addition, the company needs to adopt the policies of buying food products directly from the famers rather than obtaining them from its suppliers. This will reduce the acquisition cost since the intermediaries will have been eliminated as well as the organization will be capable of obtaining fresh products directly from the farmyards.  In addition, Chipotle should consider adopting home delivery services, especially when it faces stiff completion from the organizations like Taco Bell and Qdoba Mexican Grill. These competitors offer similar services and they are involved on similar operations, which will definitely lead to the influence on the conventional perception of service convenience (Augeneder, 2014). The organization also needs to reinforce defining longstanding contracts and relationship with the current suppliers of the organically raised and grown products, which will make it a little bit harder for the competitors to move into Chipotle’s distinguished niche through these raised entry barriers. Moreover, new principled suppliers are to be sourced out by the management to enable the organization growth rate and customers demand while ensuring that the entire menu is sourced ethically. The management should also work on more innovative marketing content rather than the old scarecrow campaign models. The organization should open a media division that will focus mainly on the perceptions that will elaborate sustainable living. Relevant Materials Different materials and texts helped in concluding and coming up with recommendations. For instance, for home delivery services, organizations such as Amazon have emulated this model in the delivering of goods to the customers’ residential or work places by using speed carrier services such as motorbikes, cars, and drones. This has affected positively the customer’s perception of the reliable delivery services (Grant, 2016). In addition, Red Bull, a leading manufacturing company of energy drinks, has used the published media empire to market, consequently improving it sales in 2013, and managed to sell more than 5.3 billion energy drink cans (Wylie, 2009). McDonald’s, the leading fast food company, has adopted several recommended strategies that enabled it maintain its high sales and dominate the market for a very long time (Augeneder, 2014). Reinforcing the defining longstanding contracts and relationships as well as sourcing out of new ethical suppliers are some of the adopted recommendations from the McDonald’s food chain. The Evaluation of Recommendations The recommendations made are successful since they have been applied by different organizations and they have worked; therefore, some small modification needs to be done to these models to fit into the Mexican Grill’s operation (Grant, 2016). Chipotle Mexican Grill, being a restaurant that aims at growing through the adoption and implementation of new strategized policies, will succeed well if it implements the recommendations as required. Unlike its competitors in the fast food industry, Chipotle is seen to have h...