In case you were not aware of the best holiday of the year, National Burrito Day was on April 1. Which really means that it’s the perfect day to get great deals on burritos and burrito bowls. And what do you think about when you think about burritos? Chipotle and Moe’s of course (and maybe Taco Bell but we don’t talk about that). Now, the Chipotle and Moe’s debate has been around for longer than me, so this article isn’t about which chain is better in general, but rather which chain did a better job with National Burrito Day this year.
Let’s start with Chipotle: this year they decided to get creative and go with a “burritos and Bitcoin” theme. In case you don’t know what Bitcoin is, it’s a cryptocurrency that can be used for various things and has a largely fluctuating price. How does it work? I’ve taken an entire class on it and I still don’t understand. Chipotle also claims that it is the first fast food chain to give away cryptocurrency. But the bottom line is that 10,000 people could win a free burrito, 50 people could win $500 in Bitcoin and three people could get $25,000 in Bitcoin. Let’s start with the website they created specially for this event. It was quite cool-looking, however all it did was lag, especially during the first two hours of the promotion. I made the mistake of trying to access it from my phone, and half the time I could not even put in the number I wanted. Overall, the website sucked.
How did the promotion itself work? You had to enter a six digit code, and if you entered a winning code, you’d win a prize. You only got 10 attempts per email address. John and I tried to win with multiple emails, but didn’t win anything. We tried to logically figure out the code, then tried random combinations, but nothing worked. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that I will not win every single promotion I enter, but I’m used to Chipotle’s “text this code to this number and get a free burrito.” I feel like they spent more money on this promotion than the usual ones, and deterred people from going to Chipotle. Sure, 10 thousand people got free burritos, but that is much less than the usual amount they give out. I have definitely seen a lot of people online saying that they do not want to deal with Chipotle’s laggy website and would rather go to Moe’s instead. Oh, but if you managed to get the website to work for all 10 of your attempts, you would get a code for free queso. Not even chips and queso, just a small thing of queso. I guess it’s better than nothing, but I was expecting better from Chipotle. Overall, I think the idea itself wasn’t terrible, but it definitely did not live up to people’s expectations. There were also not that many winners, so I’d call this a fail.
Moe’s, on the other hand, didn’t try to do anything extravagant with odd cryptocurrencies, but just gave everyone $5 burritos or burrito bowls. For once, they did not limit what you could put on the burrito (something that pisses me off on Moe Monday, when they don’t let me add my jalapenos on the burrito). So the Moe’s burritos were what John and I went for. It was a nice consolation prize after the failed Chipotle promotion.
Overall, National Burrito Day 2021 was alright. Moe’s didn’t disappoint with their usual promotion, but it wasn’t too different from Moe Monday, which, well, happens every week. Though I cannot complain about $5 burritos. Chipotle on the other hand, well they put a bitter taste in my mouth. Their promo caused a lot of frustration and left me hoping for better next year.
