Chipotle’s Amazing New Literary Initiative
From now on, you won’t just get extra guac and some scattered chips with your Chipotle Burrito Bowl. The healthy fast food chain (slogan: “food with integrity”) is adding a a cool new literary initiative to its takeout orders. Starting today, your Chipotle cup and bag will be adorned with original essays and fiction by famous writers like Toni Morrison, George Saunders and Malcolm Gladwell.
The idea originated inside the brain of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer after finding himself in a Chipotle with nothing to read. According to Vanity Fair, Safran Foer emailed the Chipotle C.E.O., got the project approved, and quickly began recruiting writers and editing their work (his own Chipotle cup entry, “Two-Minute Personality Test,” is super fun), “What interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this,” he told Vanity Fair.
The results of Safran Foer’s efforts are design-y and pretty, whimsical and smart—just the kind of thing you want with you when you’re eating lunch solo on a beautiful day—and they make carrying a Chipotle cup or bag cooler than carrying a Chipotle cup or bag ever was before. Which, really, seems like a win for everyone.
