How Chipotle adopted viral TikTok menu hacks into its long-term strategy

Chipotle is proving viral TikTok trends can become part of longer-term strategies instead of just one-and-done moments. 

The restaurant chain introduced three new menu items Tuesday based on TikTok users’ personalized orders for its new Chicken al Pastor product. This continues Chipotle’s work tapping the trendy #FoodReview TikTok niche and extending its relationship with TikTok food critic Keith Lee.

The three new products include “The Sasha Salad,” “The Dillon Bowl,” and “The Anthony Bowl.” Lee, whose TikTok food critiques—often of menu items from restaurant chains including Chipotle—regularly receive millions of views, selected these three custom orders as part of the #ChipotleTasteTest contest. The contest invited users to share their own “menu hacks” featuring Chicken al Pastor. 

This campaign comes on the heels of Chipotle embracing the viral “fajita quesadilla” menu hack—popularized by Lee and fellow creator Alexis Frost in late December—by elevating their twists on the brand’s existing steak quesadilla from a social media fad to official menu items. And, as part of Chipotle’s Chicken al Pastor launch, the brand has also introduced a variation on the “Keithadilla” including the new protein to its menu.

Related: The top 5 brand TikToks you need to know about

Chipotle turned to Lee and Frost just days after the menu hack began soaring to TikTok virality, with videos based around the fajita quesadilla order amassing more than 30 million views and nearly 70,000 shares in just seven days, the brand said in a press release.

“We saw that our quesadilla sales were going up—which was great, but they were going up inside the restaurant,” said Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer at Chipotle. Because these quesadillas took several minutes each to make, consumers placing the viral custom order in-restaurant rather than ahead of time on the brand’s website or app slowed down lines in Chipotle restaurants across the country, he said.

So, to remedy the situation, Chipotle partnered with Frost and Lee just two weeks after the menu hack began going viral to announce that the Fajita Quesadilla would soon be an official menu item—for digital-only orders. And to promote the menu items’ March 1 launch, the restaurant chain continued to team up with the duo, replacing the signs on two of its Las Vegas restaurants with signs reading “Chipotlee” and “Chipotlex.” The chain also had Lee and Frost deliver Chipotle orders to several local customers, Brandt said. The creators, as well as Chipotle, documented the collaboration on TikTok.

“It’s amazing to me how many people have taken action as a result of their posts,” Brandt added. “And I think we handled things the right way. If we waited six months for the Fajita Quesadilla to be available in our app, we would have lost all momentum. But we were able to turn the trend around very quickly—literally within just a couple of months.” 

Data from Morning Consult support Brandt’s hunch. The company’s Brand Intelligence platform tracked a 12-point spike in Chipotle’s favorability among Gen Z consumers between December—when the menu hack first emerged—and January. And that favorability climbed an additional three points from January to February. 

“Chipotle announced pretty quickly that they would be adding the new items to their menu, so even before they hit the menu, the increase in favorability with Gen Z had already taken place,” said Emily Moquin, a food and beverage analyst at Morning Consult. “A lot of the success of the story is in how quickly Chipotle responded to what was happening on TikTok.”

Moquin also cites Frost and Lee’s involvement in the partnership as a factor that boosted Gen Z’s opinion of Chipotle. Morning Consult data has found Gen Zers enjoy “trying new restaurants and menu items,” so Chipotle’s decision to play into that space on TikTok and team up with two influencers who each have large followings on those efforts “hit on some of the key interest areas for this group that helped spike favorability to this level,” she added.

With the growing popularity of the food review space on TikTok, consumers are increasingly turning to videos from creators such as Lee and Frost for recommendations about which restaurants to order from and which menu items to try. The hashtags #FoodCritic and #FoodReview, often included on videos in this TikTok niche, have over 26 billion combined views, with millions of those views stemming from just the last seven days. And Lee’s reviews have been particularly influential over the past year, repeatedly driving consumers to small businesses and restaurants, in addition to larger restaurant chains such as Chipotle. The brand considers these food critic creators “the next generation of tastemakers,” said Tressie Lieberman, VP of digital and off-premise marketing, in the press release. 

Creators such as Lee and Frost have also fueled various TikTok-viral menu hacks such as the fajita quesadilla. Menu hacks are nothing new for fast food and restaurant brands, with many of these—sometimes complicated—custom orders driven by influencer recommendations. Starbucks’ “Pink Drink,” for example, first emerged as a menu hack on Instagram back in 2016 before the company added it to its official menu a year later. 

But Chipotle itself has also dabbled in menu hack content before, using the hashtag #ChipotleHack on TikTok content such as a series of 2020 videos demonstrating how to create “at-home nachos.” The brand has even teamed up with creators to help promote these hacks—and even before the virality of the fajita quesadilla, #ChipotleHack had received roughly 80 million views. 

With Chipotle’s back-to-back campaigns centered around turning TikTok hacks into official menu items, it seems the brand will continue to embrace these custom orders going forward. 

“TikTok has not only changed the way we communicate with Gen-Z, but it's proven it can identify areas of opportunity within our business,” Brandt said in a press release.