One day, New York author Jonathan Safran Foer was looking for something to do while eating his Chipotle Mexican lunch. That moment of boredom led to a question, “What if Chipotle’s packaging was more like a book or a magazine?” And his gung ho then led to a wonderful packaging project. He is now curating a series of tiny stories from influential people, that are being used to adorn Chipotle’s fast food’s cups and bags. Every entertaining story is designed to be read in two minutes and the concept is called aptly, Cultivating Thought. The idea is an extension of Chipotle's mission to engage customers through changing the way people think about fast food.
“That’s how it started - it wasn’t actually our idea,” stated Mark Crumpacker, Chipotle’s chief marketing officer. “It was really because Jonathan was bored one day at Chiptole.
Each story is very short, limited not by the amount of time someone might have to read during lunch but by the physical space on a package. “There’s only so much you can fit on a cup.”
Foer explained, "We live in a world in which there is shrinking space for literature and writing, and less time than ever for quiet reflection. The idea of expanding the space and time, of creating a small pocket of thoughtfulness right in the middle of the busy day, was inspiring to me — particularly given the size and diversity of the audience, which is America itself."
Foer has contributed some of the anecdotes and is curating others – from writers and thinkers such as Sarah Silverman, Malcolm Gladwell, Judd Apatow, Bill Hader, Toni Morrison and Michael Lewis, Steven Pinker and Sheri Fink. The stories are presented in eye-catching designs with fanciful illustrations to maximize interest.
The anecdotes and thought-provoking questions began appearing on the packaging in Chipotle’s 1,600 restaurants through the States on May 16 and will continue “for as long as there is consumer interest”.
Here are some of the ideas shared with Chipotle’s diners:
"We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one." — Steven Pinker [experimental psychologist and a foremost writer on language and human nature. Now at Harvard University, he also has taught at Stanford and MIT.]
"Often in life, the most important question we can as ourselves is: Do we really have the problem we think we have?" — Sheri Fink [doctor, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "Five Days at Memorial”.]
"Hope that, in future, all is well, everyone eats free, no one must work, all just sit around feeling love for one another." — George Saunders [New York Times best-selling essayist and author of "Tenth of December".]
"Don't be a jerk. Try to love everyone. Give more than you take. And do it despite the fact that you only really like about seven out of 500 people." — Judd Apatow [Golden Globe-nominated writer, director and producer known for "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," "This Is 40," "Bridesmaids" and "Girls”.]
"We’ve never used our packaging in the traditional sense that fast food uses them, to promote things like Coca-Cola. This takes people out of their daily routine a little bit, maybe gets them to think about their world in a different way," Crumpacker acknowledged.
Instead of limiting the topics to food or sustainability, on which the company has focused in the past, Chipotle is allowing authors to write about whatever they want. "They’re going to be limited enough by the format such that we didn’t need to further limit them by the subject matter. And so they came up with some strikingly different things," Crumpacker explained.
Foer has contributed a "Two-Minute Personality Test" that asks random questions: “Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone?”
