The Obsession is taking a break for the next two weeks — we’ll miss you! We’ll be back in your inbox on Sept. 4.
A venti burrito but hold the lettuce
Starbucks made news this week for poaching an executive to run the coffee chain that knows one food particularly well: burritos.
Brian Niccol, a powerhouse in the restaurant industry, is expected to take over next month, bidding farewell to his transformative tenure at Chipotle. Niccol is perhaps the best pick Starbucks could’ve opted for because of his strong focus on culture, innovation, and digital technology. Those key strategies helped revitalize and boost sales at both Taco Bell and Chipotle.
At Chipotle, Niccol orchestrated a bold turnaround with a revamped menu and modernized digital ordering. He rejuvenated the burrito maker’s brand, streamlined operations, and enhanced company culture.
But before Chipotle, there was the burrito itself, a food with a backstory as tantalizing at its unlimited variations and ingredients.
Let’s roll through the history of the burrito.
By the digits
$9.9 billion: Chipotle sales in 2023
10%: Jump in Chipotle’s stock price when founder Steve Ells was replaced by Taco Bell CEO Brian Niccol back in 2018
8%: Fall in Chipotle’s stock after Niccol announced he’s heading to Starbucks
10 billion: Tortillas produces per year at the Dallas, Texas factory operated by Gruma, the world’s largest manufacturer
5,000%: Rise in Gruma’s stock price since 2009
Origin story
A mystery wrapped in an enigma
Like a lot of foodstuffs, the burrito’s origins are murky. But let’s start with its distinguishing feature: the big flour tortilla. Corn tortillas are a much more traditional Mexican ingredient, with origins that can be traced back tens of thousands of years.
Wheat-growing in Mexico dates back only to the 1500s and 1600s, after the arrival of Europeans. Northern Mexico, where many European settlers put down roots, is still the only part of the country where the burrito is a typical everyday food.
Beyond the corn/flour device, there is very little that’s certain about the burrito’s origin. Traditional burritos from Sonora, a likely homeland, are “maybe 6 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter” or “slightly larger than a big spring roll” — an evolutionary step from the taco, rather than the great leap to the modern forearm-sized creations found in the US.
One theory holds that a man named Juan Mendez boosted the dish’s popularity by selling burritos (which literally translate to “little donkeys”) in Juárez, Chihuahua from a mule-drawn cart during the Mexican revolution. The first burrito cookbook recipe found by Gustavo Arellano—one of the best-informed writers on the subject—goes back to 1934, and describes a simple tortilla stuffed with chicharrones (fried pork belly, more or less).
Some say the name comes from burritos’ resemblance to a donkey’s ears and to the packs the animals carried. That implies burritos were the first food-truck meal, back when mobile eating meant getting your wares from literal horse-powered vehicles.
Quotable
“A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.” — Mitch Hedberg
Brief history
1895: The word “burrito” first appears in a Mexico-specific Spanish dictionary.
1934: The word burrito, meaning “little burro,” first appears in an English-language cookbook.
1962: Taco Bell’s first location opens in Downey, Calif.
1964: Mission Inn owner Duane Roberts invents the frozen burrito.
1975: Santa Fe, New Mexico restaurant Tia Sophia claims to have created the first breakfast burrito.
1993: Chipotle opens its first location in Denver.
2006: In a legal battle between Panera and Qdoba, a judge rules that a burrito is not a sandwich.
2018: Taco Bell overtakes Burger King as the fourth-largest U.S. fast food chain (and still is today).
Pop quiz
How many calories are in an average Chipotle order?
A. 576
B. 899
C. 1,070
D. 2,233
The answer is rolled up at the bottom of this email.
Watch this!
Watch astronaut Chris Hadfield make a burrito… in space. No gravity required!
Fusion food: 🌯 + 🍟
The burrito is a mutt that has evolved quickly in its short lifespan. The flour tortilla is the result of the introduction of wheat by Europeans, as are many of its fillings, like cheese, beef, and pork. The American version emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, and got a boost from the bracero migrant worker program of the 1940s through the 1960s. It’s a cheap, easy-to-assemble worker’s lunch that travels well. But it wasn’t necessarily a favorite of Mexican immigrants. “Stories of Mexican students from the 1950s and 1960s suffering burrito humiliation fill the annals of Chicano literature,” writes Gustavo Arellano in Taco USA.
But Americans loved them, and they continued to evolve. The Mission-style burrito, which made Chipotle one of the biggest restaurants in the world, is named after the Mission district in San Francisco, where it emerged from a grocery store called El Faro in 1961. As the story goes, local firemen came in to the new store wanting sandwiches, which the new store didn’t have, but owner Febronio Ontiveros lured them back with super-burritos made from three smaller tortillas.
The Golden State also birthed another variation, known simply as the “California” burrito, probably arising in the 1980s from Roberto’s Taco Shop. The California twist is that the starch, instead of rice, is… french fries. Yum?
Fun fact!
In 1999 Dilbert creator Scott Adams launched a vegan microwave burrito called “the Dilberito.” The New York Times wrote that it “could have been designed only by a food technologist or by someone who eats lunch without much thought to taste.”
Poll
Is a burrito a sandwich?
- Yes!
- No!
- Wait, what?
It’s a really important question and we need your answer.
💬 Let’s talk!
In last week’s poll on the fear index, most of you (61%) thought Apocalypse Dow would make a great name for a fear index, while the rest liked AHHHHHH (29%) and The Abyss 500 (10%).
🐤 X this!
🤔 What did you think of today’s email?
💡 What should we obsess over next?
Today’s email was originally written by April Siese, edited by Whet Moser, and produced by Luiz Romero. It has been updated by Morgan Haefner and Francisco Velasquez.
The correct answer to the pop quiz is C., 1,070.