Chipotle Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Santa Rosa

Chipotle is literally the "Subway" of Mexican food.

Having said that though, the employees really do a great job here. 5/5 goes to the staff. They always serve fresh ingredients and their preparation of the food never disappoints. I've never really had a problem with any of my online orders except that ONE single time they served me stale chips but honestly, one single mistake in like a hundred visits is still very impressive.

The company itself however is the one that deserves the 3/5 star rating. I just don't like their business model. At it's core, chipotle isn't even a kitchen- it's more like a clone of Subway, but applied to Mexican food instead of sandwiches.

Nothing is actually cooked here- the ingredients are just poured out of a bag, reheated, put into metal food service trays and then "put together" and assembled in front of the customer.

Granted that the quality of the food here is many orders of magnitude better than taco bell, you still get bored of eating here after a while because the food is nowhere near as good as it would be in a real authentic Mexican food truck or restaurant.

But Chipotle isn't trying to be authentic. They're taking the same route as Taco Bell and just kinda inventing their own thing. A lot of people like inauthentic faux Mexican food and that's not a bad thing.

My only complaint about the company is that I can't see myself eating here every day because the preservative-laden pre bagged meat ingredients just don't hit the spot like a good street taco hits the spot.

On a side note, their mobile app is great. 5/5 to whoever...

1st observation; saw employee put new product (meat) on top of old, not properly adhering to proper food rotation. The Tin (metal insert) on the food service line was about a 1/3 full of meat, instead of rotating the food, she poured new product on top of old, with out changing the insert, proper food rotation and keeping inserts clean in instrumental in food service cleanliness and best practices…

2nd observation, same visit, saw employee knock over small stack of about 8 or 9 medium sized to go containers, maybe for beans or rice. The stacked to go bowls hit the dirty floor behind the line, to right of the register if you’re facing the register, where the online / food delivery section is. That 1st Employee made no attempt to pick them up and toss them out. 2nd employee packing up a Uber eats order slightly kicked the stack of bowls a few inches (they rolled), allowing more dirty floor funk to accumulate on the still “stacked” bowls, 3rd employee noticed stack of bowls on the dirty food-line floor and picked them up and put them back on the shelf for to go use…. Yum

No big deal but chips were stale, half stale, half relatively fresh, leading one to believe again improper food rotation.

Chunks of meat in the queso cheese sauce, not sure if the queso sauce comes with chunks of chicken in it but ours did… leading one to believe cross contamination from unintended foods falling into other tins on the line…. (If it’s advertised that there are chunks of meat in the cheese sauce, I take back this last observation)

LB Former kitchen manager, line cook, and...

Pick up deliveries from this location. Staff is completely not knowledgeable about how to run a quality efficient business. The manager has no idea how to handle her staff and the staff are all so young that whenever you ask them something they have to look at the manager for permission to speak and not for themselves. There was 1 patron, 1 employee in line to order and 3 delivery drivers waiting for orders. They helped the employee first, then the patron then skipped asking the delivery drivers who was their first and who had what order to get them out as fast as possible. Instead them jumble up a whole mess of receipts and start making whatever one looks easiest first. Which of course wasn't any of our orders. We all asked them time frame and why they hadn't asked is who we were waiting for firmly but professional. The manager looked at us and said not to yell at her people and to leave the restaurant we were to wait till it is brought to us and call ahead for our order from now on because we are disruptive and rude. Which no one was yelling except her and she made 3 different deliveries late. Which this has been reported...