The Qdoba Difference

Some time ago I wrote in this space about a unique food service operation called Chipotle, and how they managed to parlay a handful of food items into over 2,000 different menu choices – resulting in extremely high speed in food production and relatively low costs while maintaining relatively high ingredient quality. Not surprisingly, about two years after the launch of the first Chipotle, a competitor using a similar formula launched in the same market in Denver, Colorado. The new organization was called Qdoba, and it utilized a number of the same production elements. But, as I discovered on visiting a Qdoba for the first time this past weekend, it’s not an exact copy or even the complete rip-off it initially appears to be. The truth is, the Qdoba people are using a similar business model to produce a different product and service…

The first difference in the business model is obvious the moment you walk into a Qdoba restaurant: there is no pounding Mexican/Industrial music, no corrugated iron siding on the walls, no stainless-steel seating areas or post-industrial décor. Instead, you’ve got acoustic ceiling tiles, carpet, and conventional seating areas combined with a much quieter background music, resulting in a dining environment in which it is actually possible to talk (dining at a Chipotle the conversation usually consists of yelling “What?” every minute or two). The restaurant we went to in East Lansing had a flat-panel TV on the wall with Olympic coverage going, as well. The whole message of the place is different; where a Chipotle is supposed to be “crazy fast” and edgy, this operation encourages the customer to actually sit and enjoy their meal, and take their time over it…

Then there’s the menu. Like its older competitor, Qdoba offers burritos, tacos, nachos, and other semi-traditional Mexican food (yes, I know that most real Mexicans do not eat these dishes; it’s traditional Mexican food as made in the US, all right?), but instead of the multiple permutations menu favored by Chipotle, the menu here has specific combinations of meats, cheeses, and condiments. You are encouraged to modify any or all of the combinations to suit your particular taste, but there is no requirement to make up your own combination unless you want to. This increases the time needed to construct your meal, and increases the complexity of both food fabrication and staff training, but it also gives the illusion of a more conventional restaurant meal…

And then there’s the food itself. The one constant in a Chipotle menu is the heat; unless you like your food relatively spicy you will find most of the menu items a bit on the hot side. By contrast, the Qdoba menu includes a number of much milder elements, which makes it possible for those with a wider range of tastes to enjoy their food – and permits those who do like spicy food to eat it more frequently with the attendant heartburn. Taken in combination with the slower pace, the more comfortable seating, and the less threatening menu, it’s a combination that should be able to compete with Chipotle anywhere, and which seems to work very well indeed in the upper Midwest…

They key point to consider here is that Qdoba isn’t just a copy of the Chipotle operation – though it easily could have been. Even granted that the founders of Chipotle were graduates of the Culinary Institute of America, and that their food is generally superior in flavor and design, there is no reason the Qdoba people could not have reverse-engineered the entire process, or else hired their own culinary experts to produce a close copy. Instead, they took many of the competition’s best design elements, and created a product/service that could complete directly with Chipotle, taking advantage of all of the weaknesses of their adversary’s model (e.g. loud, uncomfortable, a menu you have to figure out for yourself, a rushed experience, and spicy food). As a result, their business is much more successful than a knock-off version would have been. It’s something to consider the next time you are thinking about reverse-engineering a competitor…