January 13th, 2009
Order a burrito from your iPhone, or not
No one loves a burrito more than me, that’s why I was interested to discover that Mexican food chain Chipotle has released an iPhone app. (McDonald’s used to be the majority interest in Chipotle but sold their stake in October 2006, but I digress…)
According to the Intertubes the Chipotle iPhone app allowed users to customize their order by checking a series of boxes. Once complete the order is sent to a nearby restaurant for pickup.
After being posted briefly on Monday morning the application was quickly and unceremoniously removed without explanation. Users on MacRumors forums were reporting problems with the app was extremely buggy.
TechCrunch (pun?) got in touch with Sequence, the company that is building the app for Chipotle.
As it turns out, the company decided to pull the application after a few hours because of unexpected demand that was overloading its servers. User requests were timing out with enough frequency that the team decided it would rather hold off until it could offer a more enjoyable and reliable experience.
The current goal is to have it back on the App Store in two weeks, along with some cosmetic changes (many of the user reviews that were left while the app was still available had some complaints regarding the user experience).
My problem is that there isn’t a Chipotle location near me (~60 miles). I wonder if Baja Fresh and Taco Bell are following all this? Can all the fast food chains be far behind? The first restaurant to do an iPhone app right stands to win a lot of loyalty – not to mention good PR.
What restaurant would you most like to see on the iPhone? Chime in in the TalkBack below.
(Images: Gizmodo and TechCrunch)
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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