Chipotle is opening its first location in Mexico. In Monterrey. This is the business equivalent of selling ice to Eskimos, except the Eskimos invented ice and have been making it for centuries while you just figured out how to freeze water last week.
The company built a multi-billion dollar empire by convincing Americans that putting rice in a burrito was authentic Mexican cuisine. Now they're taking that vision to the one place on earth where everyone already knows what actual Mexican food tastes like. Bold strategy.
Imagine being a taco vendor in Monterrey. You've been perfecting your abuela's recipe since you were six years old. Your al pastor is so good people drive three hours just to eat it. Then some corporation from Colorado shows up and says "we're bringing Mexican food to Mexico." You'd think it was a joke. It's not a joke.
Retail traders will see this headline and immediately start googling "Chipotle Mexico expansion DD" like this changes anything about the stock. It doesn't. The chart doesn't care that you can now get a carnitas bowl in the city that invented carnitas. The 50-day moving average is not impressed by your geopolitical burrito analysis.
Some analyst will write a note calling this "a strategic penetration of an underdeveloped market segment." That analyst makes $200,000 a year to describe Mexico, the birthplace of Mexican cuisine, as an underdeveloped market for Mexican food. His Ferrari has personalized plates.
The Monterrey location will probably do great business. Not because Chipotle cracked some secret formula. Because people are curious idiots who will stand in line for two hours to eat worse versions of things they can get anywhere else, as long as the logo is American and the rice looks like it was cooked by someone who's afraid of seasoning.
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