Changes are afoot and nowhere is that more evident that at Chipotle (CMG).
After years of building its brand around stability and customers who will order the same meat-guacamole-salsa-avocado combination, the brand has been making some significant menu additions.
First some new quesadillas then a new chicken main and, now garlic guajillo steak and potentially even desserts.
Did You Hear The Words 'Dessert' Right?
As the Tex-Mex fast casual chain has not had a dessert on its permanent menu — the closest would be its agua fresca drinks in flavors like mandarin and organic berry — since its founding in 1993, the latter in particular has caused many Chipotle fans to sit a little tighter.
During the company's first-quarter earnings call on April 28, the fast-food chain announced that it was playing around with several dessert options to bring to the menu in the coming year.
Chief Marketing Officer Chris Brandt later told Fox News that "dessert is an area where we see opportunity" even if the company isn't "ready to push anything through the official stage gate process yet."
Other outlets later reported that some possibilities thrown around by Chipotle over the last year included Mexican chocolate shakes and an apple dipping sauce.
That said, neither made it past the idea phase for any sort of official announcement.
In the same earnings call, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said that the chain was "using a disciplined, stage-gate approach to innovation" and aiming to launch two to three new items every year.
Right now, that is taking the form of a new protein: The Garlic Guajillo Steak is currently being tested in select Chipotle restaurants in Denver, Indianapolis and California's Orange County.
What Is Chipotle Trying To Do Here?
So many new items marks a major change for Chipotle. The new Pollo Asado launched in March was the first new chicken dish to appear on the menu in the chain's 29-year history.
While competitors like Yum! Brands (YUM)-owned Taco Bell currently has its Cinnabon Delights, Chipotle is yet to roll out a permanent dessert item.
In the past, Chipotle tried to test the cinnamon-dusted dough fritters known as Buñuelos and a Mexican chocolate milkshake but neither dessert ever took off the ground.
Whatever Chipotle is currently doing is clearly working as a recent earnings call reported a 26% spike in revenue between 2020 and 2021.
But the lack of a dessert has also not gone unnoticed by those who eat at the fast-casual chain regularly and some on Reddit have for years been theorizing on why Chipotle is yet to launch one.
The most common theories are difficulty of on-the-spot assembly and the stability of the menu.
The People Want Dessert. Or Do They?
Even when it manages to gain the icon status of something like the McDonald's (MCD) McFlurry, dessert is usually of secondary importance to fast-food chains that do not specialize in it.
It rarely makes up even 10% of all of a given chain's sales and is often more of a strategy to get customers to their stores rather than a main way of generating income.
But at the same time, any hint at a new dessert from a popular chain is often met with a lot of internet buzz.
Some of it is excitement but, more often, longtime fans leave snarky comments about what they see as sacrilege to the menu,
"Chipotle is going to start offering desserts, when what we really want is BREAKFAST," user @VegasGiblet wrote in Twitter (TWTR) post.
