The Early Word On Chipotle’s Sofritas

Makovsky

Sofritas is a shredded soy product that was introduced by Chipotle last month. The vegan-friendly product is the first new protein item the chain has added since they opened their doors. Sofritas was rolled out across test markets on the East Coast and it’s likely the new burrito option will be available nationwide very soon, especially after what we found using social listening. 

The new item was announced and instantly sparked a number of media mentions. One Fast Company article that detailed the product development process was tweeted over 1400 times. A tweet from PETA “Vegans Rejoice!” garnered more than 240 retweets. 

When Sofritas hit New York City and Boston stores on March 3^rd, people were already aware of the new offering and eager to try it. 

So what’s the early word? Well, if Twitter is any indicator, it’s good and it appears Chipotle hit a homerun.

Despite the limited availability, we were able to find 805 people who indicated they tried and enjoyed the product. From our calculations, positive mentions outpace negative mentions by 24 to 1. In fact, we were barely able to find any negative feedback (from people who actually indicated they tried it) on Sofritas at all. The biggest complaint we found about Sofritas is that they are not available at all Chipotles.  

We also found a few vegans not too happy about finding a piece of meat mixed in with their Sofritas. Other than that, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. 

This exercise demonstrates the value of social listening, particularly around a product launch. Social listening essentially taps into the world’s largest market research group; however, the feedback tends to be more honest and insightful because people don’t anybody is listening when they tweet about a burrito. 

So to our friends over at Chipotle, if you were waiting for insights before rolling out Sofritas, we say go ahead and go for it! 

To learn more about our approach to social listening, click here.

– Scott Ziegler