If your fast food or fast casual restaurant isn’t also a lifestyle brand by now, you’re way behind the curve. It’s about much more than just food now. It’s about the apparel. The experience. Streetwear hype. Resale game. All of that. We’re way past just kids’ meal toys, baby.
Chipotle is keeping things very on-brand and eco-friendly for its next round of merchandise by using avocado pits as dye for its branded apparel.
According to Nation’s Restaurant News, Chipotle is using about 300 million avocado pits from its food supply and creating a plant-based dye for T-shirts, sweaters and tote bags.
The apparel line just dropped yesterday, and complements other products modeled after the food, like a “black bean” colored jacket, a “rice” colored blouse, and a swaddle blanket with the message “Sleep tight little burrito.”
Chipotle has announced a new "responsibly sourced" clothing and goods line. All of its T-shirts, sweatshirts and tote bags will be dyed with the food chain's used avocado pits that would otherwise go to waste. https://t.co/qL7yXz8vVD
— CNN (@CNN) August 4, 2020
Adorable.
“We know people are looking to celebrate their passion for Chipotle, and we set out to create a line of products with the same thoughtfulness, care and attention to detail that we use in our kitchens,” Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer for Chipotle, said in a statement to NRN. “With Chipotle Goods, our fans can get quality items that support sustainable agriculture and represent our mission of cultivating a better world.”
Most of the products were supplied by Loomstate, which also makes the company’s uniforms from organic cotton.
Back to the avocado dye for a second—using avocado as dye and ink dates back to the Spanish conquest of Central and South America, actually. And what makes avocado dye so interesting is that despite the brown color of the seed, the dye is naturally a light pink.
Chipotle wants its customers to eat — and wear — its avocados. https://t.co/lD9cSryL1R
— nwi.com (@nwi) August 3, 2020
The brand will be using the stones to create a dye for clothes and bags, with each bag using up about five avo pits to transform its colour
— Metro Lifestyle (@MetroUK_Life) August 4, 2020
Each shirt from Chipotle includes about five avocado pits, which Chipotle equates to five orders of guacamole (aka enough to bankrupt even the most savvy millennial, as the old jokes say.)
Apparel companies have been great at finding new ways to limit waste and use sustainable materials. And this decision from Chipotle just makes sense on a bunch of levels. They have the avocado pits laying around anyway, and that shade of pink is pretty popular already, so it’s a natural fit.
As you should know by now, Promo Marketing is a pro-avocado publication. We approve.
