Though famous for their Mexican Grill and even their recent attempt to get everyone to try their tofu menu item by giving patrons free meals, there's also a Chipotle pizza place called Pizzeria Locale, which has been shyly attempting to expand its business to new areas, the latest of which is Kansas City.
The Chipotle pizza place is a fairly recent project that saw its birth in 2013 after the fast casual dining Mexican chain partnered with a cult restaurant in Denver, Colorado, to create a fast-food version of the venue while keeping its name, as well as planning to expand to further pizza places in the Denver area with at least two more venues.
According to Eater, now the Chipotle pizza joint will be expanding outside Colorado (and in general the Denver area) for the first time ever, as they attempt with Pizzeria Locale to manage what they already did with Mexican food: expanding the model of fast-casual food into new markets.
"We just signed a deal for the first Pizzeria Locale in Kansas City, which will be the third overall and the first outside of Denver," said Chris Arnold, the communications director of Chipotle, to CNBC. "We haven't addressed expansion plans for Pizzeria Locale beyond that."
While the Chipotle pizza place is a fairly new development, the company was one of the first restaurants to push forward the notion of fast-casual dining in the United States, a model that has been followed by other restaurants like Panera Bread, Culvers and Zaxby's in the last few years.
The Huffington Post spoke to an expert restaurant consultant named Aaron Allen recently, from Aaron Allen & Associates, and he said that, although there are no further expansion statements from Chipotle regarding Pizzeria Locale, it is expected that the jump to a new state could mean the acceleration of their business model for the creation of a bigger Chipotle pizza chain.
