21 Chipotle Trivia Questions To Find Out If Fast Food Is Your ‘Friend Or Faux’

Looking for the perfectly rolled burrito? Just ask any American college student and they’ll quickly let you know the best place is your local Chipotle restaurant.

If you think you know the Chipotle menu in and out then you’re probably ready to take on this Chipotle quiz!

Even if you’re not a college student, if you appreciate trendy customized burritos, Chipotle is probably a regular on your weekly restaurant rotation. Having been part of the American fast-food culture since 1993, Chipotle has established itself as a healthier fast-food choice for the socially conscious consumer.

Think you’ve got the Chipotle knowledge to take the prize, try these trivia questions and answers to prove you know your barbacoa from your sofritas and your queso blanco from your chipotle honey vinaigrette.

The Chipotle ‘Friend or Faux’ Campaign

Are consumers really becoming more aware of the ingredients is in their food? Or is it just a marketing ploy by the food and beverage industry?

Chipotle is prepared to call the industry’s bluff while calling attention to its own commitment to serving genuine, high-quality ingredients raised with respect for farmers, the environment, animals and consumers.

Meanwhile, many food and drink companies are talking about removing artificial ingredients from their products. Their commitment to the promise, however, remains to be seen.

Restaurant brands including Panera Bread, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have all recently pledged to remove artificial ingredients from their menu items. Chipotle joined the list in April 2015, saying it would remove genetically modified ingredients from menu items served across all US States. 

The commitment to remove artificial ingredients from their products is only the tip of the iceberg though. In fact, most of the recent announcements cover only a portion of the thousands of additives used in processed foods.

That’s why Chipotle launched its 2015 ‘Friend or Faux’ campaign. The online game of “food, flavors and fakery” challenged customers to investigate a company’s commitment to giving them wholesome, natural ingredients – or if they were just jumping on the bandwagon. 

The game highlights how many faux ingredients are lurking in typical fast-food items. Albeit, while inadvertently promoting the Chipotle nutrition facts of various menu items.

In the game, you selected a Chipotle menu item and a generic fast-food alternative. You were presented with an ingredient, and you had to decide which item it was in — it could be in both, too!

In the end, Chipotle lists all of the “friendly ingredients” and “faux additives” in each product. Players were incentivized to through sweepstakes promotions like “buy 1 get 1 free chipotle burrito, burrito bowl, salad or order of tacos (up to a $10 value).”

While the game is no longer available, the message remains relevant and the reality of eating highly processed American food remains the same. As long as fast food and American pop culture go hand-in-hand, consumers should understand their food choices.

The ‘Friend or Faux’ campaign was the perfect example of an integrated marketing campaign. It provided consumers with an interactive experience that invited them to learn about the difference between Chipotle’s ingredients as well as those commonly used to make fast food.

The campaign showcased the beauty of Chipotle’s food against the complex ingredient lists that make up many fast-food and packaged food items.

By engaging people in a way that makes them more curious about what they are eating, Chipotle hoped consumers would better understand the options that are available to them.

It’s not the first time Chipotle used gamification to highlight its “Food With Integrity” positioning either. In 2013, Chipotle made a splash with its “Scarecrow” game, which was an arcade-style adventure game. The “Scarecrow” game accompanied the release of its dystopia-styled online animated movie that highlighted the chain’s sustainable ingredients.

Other fast-food Brands have used gamification too. Domino’s Pizza featured its “Pizza Hero” app, which let users build a virtual pizza, and Bojangles’ “Bo Time” app included Digital Cornhole, which simulated the popular bean bag game for tailgating.

Chipotle’s ‘Friend or Faux’ campaign cleverly educated consumers about the ingredients in its own food while also highlighting the ingredients in its competitors’ food.

The key message of the campaign was that Chipotle’s competitors aren’t all bad. And that Chipotle is not perfect either! While the obvious result was consumer entertainment, the biggest outcome of the campaign was to highlight how some of the biggest fast-food companies and Chipotle’s major competitors are using many nasty ingredients.

This would play into Chipotle’s long-term purpose to instigate a change in consumer behavior based on a greater understanding of their choices. And whether they choose Chipotle or not, any change in their behavior will still move the market in a direction that works for Chipotle.