Chipotle iPhone App Now Available

Chipotle announced today that their iPhone app to locate, order from and pay a Chipotle is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch at Apple's App Store.

The mobile ordering app gives iPhone users the ability to create their favorite Chipotle order, place it at the Chipotle location of their choice and even pay for their food using the app.

“The breakthrough iPhone and iPod touch have really given us the ability to deliver a compelling experience to customers which includes simplicity, personality and attention to detail," said Steve Ells, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle. "We are changing the way the world thinks about and eats fast food, and the iPhone and iPod touch give us powerful new ways to engage and serve our customers. While we have always made our high quality food affordable and accessible so everyone can eat better, we've probably never been this accessible.”

Chipotle is also updating their online web ordering site (which we've written about previously).

McRib Plays A Tune and Rings Your Cell

I know. It happens every year. But once again, we'll mention that McRib is back.

It is a love/hate thing. It seems nobody has a neutral feeling about this processed and pressed pork BBQ sandwich (with the fake ribs!).

This year McDonald's has teamed up with Myxer and Pandora to ad some musical and cellular excitement to the McRib experience.

Pandora is a great online music station that learns what you like and allows you to create your own stations with your preferences.

McDonald's marketing folks have set up 4 'stations' on Pandora: "Move Your Buns Soulful Ballads," "Tender Love Tunes of Today," "Saucy Love Classics of the 80's," and "McRib Country Flavor Classics."

When I checked out the "Move Your Buns" station, the first 3 songs were "Around the Way Girl" by LL Cool J, "My Adidas" by Run DMC, and "Have You Seen Her" by MC Hammer.

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McDonald's has selected Myxer's Bullseye hyper-targeting service for the mobile phone portion of their McRib campaign.

You can text MCRIB to 69937 (MYXER) for the McRib content. Or you can just point your browser (phone or computer) www.myxer.com/MCRIB/

There you'll find some wallpapers and screensavers for you phone like the one above, or the "McRib Kiss" (on the right).

But if you're a McRib 'hater' instead of a McRib 'lover,' we thought we'd supply you with a sexy shot of a naked McRib 'patty' with its BBQ sauce washed off (below left), or a close-up of the inside of a McRib 'patty' (below right). These are from our McRib Deconstructed special a couple years back. Now these are some appetizing wallpapers!

McDonald's also has some Ringtones at Myxer. You would definitely have to be a McRib 'lover' to have this one on your phone! (Click 'Preview' to have a listen.)

Chipotle's New Online Ordering

Chipotle now has new, enhanced online ordering for all their restaurants.  You can place your order at order.chipotle.com.

You can place specific orders for separate people.  There is an order summary at the bottom of the page after you add each person's 'bag' to the whole order.

There's also an expanded group ordering function that lets you place multi-item orders under a single group name and invite friends or co-workers (via e-mail) to add their single order to the group order.

There is a space for special instructions, too.  Which is good, because I didn't see a checkbox for pico de gallo for my burrito, so I added it to my 'special instructions.'

You can save your favorite orders, too.  So if you regularly order the same thing, it will be there with one click the next time you log in.

A screen grab of my most common order is below.

A note about logging in... be ready to come up with a password for your account that is 8 characters long, has at least 1 uppercase letter, at least 1 lowercase number and at least 1 number! A tad annoying, but great security!

All in all a great online ordering experience. And the burrito was great, as always.

Some words about the new system from Chipotle:

"This is another way we are making our high quality food available and affordable so everyone can eat better," says Steve Ells, Chipotle founder, chairman and CEO. "We can deliver a great Chipotle experience in a way that meets the demands of time-pressed customers."

"We asked our regular online users and our most tech-savvy customers how to best improve this system," Ells says. "This new version is faster, easier to use, and will enable us to add additional features and applications as new technology allows."