Disappointing: Sweetgreen Changes Name Of Burrito Bowl, Bowing To Chipotle

from the must-be-chicken-in-that-bowl dept

A few weeks back, we talked about a lawsuit Chipotle filed against Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain dedicated mostly to serving salads and grain bowls. The suit centered on Sweetgreen announcing a new menu item: a “Chipotle Burrito Bowl.” We found the entire suit quite odd, given that Sweetgreen’s menu item is named in a way that makes it purely descriptive. It’s a burrito bowl with chipotle flavoring. That isn’t the sort of thing that equates to trademark infringement and mostly serves to point out that Chipotle, the restaurant, did a terrible job naming itself if it wanted to trademark its business name. I concluded the post thusly:

In other words, Chipotle is mostly suing as a result of its own original sin: it chose a name for itself that can be used as well to describe a sort of food or flavor on offer. I don’t expect this suit to get very far, though that may not be the point. Sweetgreen is much smaller than Chipotle and this may simply be a bullying attempt by the latter.

As we’ve pointed out a zillion times, trademark bullying works far too often. And this appears to be yet another instance of it working. While I’m supremely confident that a fight through a trial over the suit would not yield a victory for Chipotle, we’ll never get to find out if I’m right, since Sweetgreen has already changed the name of its menu item.

Those looking forward to a legal showdown between the two fast casual competitors will be disappointed, however. Within two days of the suit being filed, Sweetgreen agreed to change the name, CNBC confirmed.

According to CNBC, an agreement in principle has been reached between the two rival chains, and Sweetgreen’s newest menu item will henceforth be known as the Chicken + Chipotle Pepper Bowl. The amended moniker has already been added to the Sweetgreen website, where the dish is described as having “an all-grains base, citrusy black beans, and house-made roasted chipotle salsa.”

That this name change would result in the suit being resolved makes even less sense to me. The Chipotle is still in there. The only thing that changed was a swap of terms that are arguably even more descriptive and generic than “chipotle.” Either the damn thing is a burrito bowl or it isn’t. Why changing it to a “pepper” bowl should placate the suits over at Chipotle is completely beyond me, other than my guessing that someone finally took a look at this suit, decided it was a total loser if it went to trial, and decided to opt for getting a pint of blood to declare victory.

Hell, none of this even keeps Sweetgreen from selling burrito bowls generally.

Names aside, both Sweetgreen and Chipotle are now selling burrito bowls, and both offered promotions in conjunction with National Burrito Day on April 6. It looks like the next contentious battle between the two will be fought over sales.

It sure sounds like, on the merits, Sweetgreen ripped up a ticket for a winning horse. Still, as stated in the original post, Chipotle is big and Sweetgreen is not, and so we have yet another annoying instance of trademark bullying working.

Filed Under: burrito bowl, burritos, chipotle burrito bowl, trademark
Companies: chipotle, sweetgreen

Chipotle Sues Sweetgreen For Having Its Own ‘Chipotle Burrito Bowl’

from the what's-in-a-name? dept

If there is one aspect of trademark law that should be the most understandable for business leaders and their lawyers, if not for the general public, it’s that you generally cannot get trademarks on purely descriptive terms. Yes, you can name your product Coca-Cola and get a trademark on that term, but you cannot get a trademark on “cola” or “soda” and threaten or sue everyone else who uses it to describe their own products. Simple, right?

It appears that Chipotle doesn’t get it. The burrito house chain recently sued a rival, Sweetgreen, over the latter’s sale of chipotle chicken burrito bowls.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Chipotle said that Sweetgreen’s “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl” is being marketed in a “very similar and directly competitive” manner that is similar to Chipotle’s chicken burrito bowl. Sweetgreen released the salad last week, with a press release saying that the new menu item uses “chipotle spices.”

Chipotle argues that the Sweetgreen salad not only has similar ingredients, including chicken, a grain base (i.e. rice) and black beans, but also took issue with Sweetgreen’s marketing because it accuses its rival of “making prominent use of the famous Chipotle trademark” in ads.

I can assure you this is all excessively stupid. First, the recipe conversation is absolutely a non-starter. What Chipotle is describing are the contents of a burrito, but in a bowl. That’s as available for protection under trademark law as the contents of a club sandwich, which is to say not at all.

As for the use of a similar trademarked term, yeah it’s similar, but it’s also purely descriptive. Sweetgreen is advertising a “chipotle chicken burrito bowl,” which consists of chicken in chipotle spices and burrito ingredients in a bowl. That’s as descriptive as it gets. The fact that Chipotle decided to name itself after a flavor doesn’t in any way preclude Sweetgreen from selling and advertising this product. To suggest otherwise would be absurd.

Chipotle also accused Sweetgreen of using a “font nearly identical” to Chipotle’s on its website promoting the new salad. Some of Sweetgreen’s ads, also use color that’s “nearly identical” to Chipotle’s trademarked Adobo Red.

That’s a stretch as well. These are directly from Chipotle’s filing. First, here is an exampe of its own mark.

And now for the filing’s examples of the infringing uses.

And:

In the second example, the colors are similar, but two caveats. First, Sweetgreen’s name is on the sign, which presumably sits just outside a Sweetgreen location, so I’m not sure where the public confusion would occur. Second, both entities chose shades of that color almost certainly for the most obvious reason: a chipotle pepper is a smoked pepper typically kept in adobo sauce. That sauce is roughly the colors that are being used here.

In other words, Chipotle is mostly suing as a result of its own original sin: it chose a name for itself that can be used as well to describe a sort of food or flavor on offer. I don’t expect this suit to get very far, though that may not be the point. Sweetgreen is much smaller than Chipotle and this may simply be a bullying attempt by the latter.

Filed Under: burrito bowl, chipotle, trademark
Companies: chipotle, sweetgreen

Chipotle Exposes Private Data By Sending HR E-mails Via Unowned Domain, Doesn't See The Problem

from the utterly-oblivious dept

Chipotle has been making headlines lately for all the wrong reasons. While justifiably lauded for its efforts at embracing more sustainable agriculture, the restaurant is currently in the aftermath of a massive E. Coli outbreak in Washington and Oregon that resulted in dozens of illnesses and hospitalizations. And while the CDC’s ongoing investigation of that outbreak is grabbing most of the public’s attention, the company’s quietly been caught up in another, less noticed snafu involving a total lack of fundamental, security common sense.

Apparently, Chipotle?s human resources department has been replying to new job applicants using the “chipotlehr.com” domain. The problem? This is a domain that the company neither owns nor controls, meaning that anybody could nab it for themselves and, with minimal effort, begin harvesting applicant data while posing as Chipotle. While the messages sent to applicants from this domain urge them not to respond to the e-mail, the fact that an unowned domain is being used for communications still remains obviously problematic:

Noticing this potentially major problem, a security researcher named Michael Kohlman (applying to apparently maintain unemployment benefits while between gigs) grabbed the domain for $30. He then reached out to Chipotle to explain the potential liability of the company’s sloppy security and offer the company the domain, for free. Chipotle’s response? Utter and total denial that there was any problem whatsoever:

“Kohlman has since offered to freely give over the domain to the restaurant chain. But Chipotle expressed zero interest in acquiring the free domain. In fact, Chipotle?s spokesman Chris Arnold says the company doesn?t see this as a big deal at all.

“The chipotlehr.com domain is not a functional address and never has been,? Arnold wrote in an emailed statement. ?It never had any operational significance, and never served to solicit or accept any kind of response. So there has never been a security risk of any kind associated with this. That address is being changed to careers.chipotle.com (a domain that we do own), but this has never been functional and is really a non-issue.?

That’s a $3.5 billion company showing it has zero understanding of security. At all. The fact that it lacked “operational significance” is totally irrelevant. All a hacker would need to do is register the domain, begin replying to recipients, and direct them to even a crude facsimile of a real Chipotle website. From there, it would have been trivial to farm applicants for all manner of personal data, including addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers. The proper response from Chipotle to somebody highlighting this and offering the domain for free? Thank you.

Filed Under: email, hr, security
Companies: chipotle

DailyDirt: Eating At Chipotle

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people really like eating at Chipotle. It’s supposed to be healthy (although it really depends on what you order). The ingredients are often (but not always) from sustainable sources, and customers enjoy their meals. A few really fanatical eaters have devised some bizarre eating games with Chipotle food. Almost every fast food restaurant has a “secret menu” of some kind nowadays, but if you really like Chipotle, here are some extreme eaters who have documented their Chipotle purchases.

• Andrew Hawryluk gave up NOT going to Chipotle for Lent, and he called his strange non-abstinence “Chipotlent” and blogged about it. Since February 18, 2015, this 23yo animator from Los Angeles has been eating at Chipotle at least once a day… for over 6 months now. He’s been compared to Jared who once represented Subway, but maybe that’s not such a favorable comparison now. [url]
• It’s one thing to order a meal at Chipotle every day, but it’s another process entirely to try to maximize the weight of your food. If you want to do it, though, you can apparently get 86% more food (by weight) than just ordering like a normal person. [url]
• The ‘Chipotle Quesarito’ is a secret menu hack that uses a cheese quesadilla to wrap your burrito, instead of just a plain tortilla. Recently, however, Chipotle has started charging $3.50 extra for this “have it your way” hack, but it’s still a popular order. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: andrew hawryluk, chipotlent, dylan grosz, fast food, food, healthy, jared fogle, quesarito, restaurants, secret menu
Companies: chipotle, subway

DailyDirt: All Natural Doesn't Necessarily Mean Good For You…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A growing trend in food packaging seems to be using the words “all natural” to describe ingredients. This is meant to be an improvement over the previous “completely artificial” ingredients that have been used for decades. However, as some point out, the use of natural ingredients doesn’t necessarily mean what consumers might think it means. Starbucks found out that “natural” might not satisfy all of its customers when it switched from Red #40 to a natural food coloring made from crushed insects. Those crushed insects aren’t harmful, but that’s not exactly what folks were expecting from a “natural” ingredient, either.

• Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (both owned by Yum Brands) have announced plans to get rid of artificial colors and flavors from their menu items. As an example, Taco Bell said it’s going to stop using artificial black pepper flavor and use “natural black pepper flavor” — but the company wouldn’t disclose the exact difference between those ingredients. [url]
• Chipotle said it has gone GMO free (well, except for its drinks). The media coverage wasn’t as glowingly positive as might have been expected, though. [url]
• Some food alarmists have been warning people that artificial strawberry and raspberry flavorings come from “beaver anal glands” — but that’s not exactly true. Castoreum is an extract from a beaver’s organ located near — but not from — a beaver’s butt, and this natural flavoring/fragrance isn’t widely used in foods because it’s actually too expensive to be economical in many food products. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: artificial, castoreum, coloring, flavoring, food, fragrance, gmo, natural, taste
Companies: chipotle, pizza hut, starbucks, taco bell, yum brands