Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. may soon be adding hamburgers to its repertoire. The Denver-based chain filed a trademark application for "Better Burger" earlier this month, indicating that the company might still be going ahead with its burger-making plans announced last July despite its ongoing recovery from a food-safety crisis.
"It's a growth seed idea we are exploring," Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold told Bloomberg. “We have two non-Chipotle growth seeds open now — ShopHouse [Southeast Asian Kitchen] and Pizzeria Locale — and have noted before that the Chipotle model could be applied to a wide variety of foods." Both Chipotle's pizza and Southeast Asian cuisine chains only have a few locations at this point, but The Wall Street Journal reports that they are expanding. Burgers, similarly, have the potential to be a profitable venture for Chipotle as the category grows and beef prices continue to drop, Bloomberg reports.
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