Capstone Final Project and PresentationOverview This assignment consists of two sections: a final capstone project plan and a closing process PowerPoint presentation. You must submit both sections as

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL 6

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Importance of Innovation

Chipotle Mexican Grill is a large restaurant in the United States dealing with fast foods. The company needs to invest in innovation to boost its long-term survival in the hospitality industry. Design helps the company build a better guest connection. The guests' experience is made extraordinary by finding ways that will exceed customers' expectations. A good example is creating large data warehouses containing the restaurant's habits and preferences, making it easier for the company to work with its most frequent customers. Innovation provides new solutions for the old problems experienced in Chipotle Mexican Grill (Abwanzo, 2017). The answers can range from using the right technologies, social networks hot spots, digital signage, and Multimedia Entertainment Program Guide. The solutions increase the customers' satisfaction with the restaurant's services. Innovation encourages benchmarking and value within the hospitality industry. The benchmarking service is essential to the achievement of outstanding services in all restaurants. Compared with competitors, it increases the morale to provide better services each year after analyzing guests' feedback about their services. Chipotle Mexican Grill can embrace diversity to foster innovation. Variety is the key to innovative ideas within a company. It means the company members should be mixed in terms of gender, age groups, and backgrounds. The personnel selection is the overall innovation strategy for the company.

Evolution

I expect the company to evolve in various ways in 5-10 years. The company should innovate ideas that will increase customers' satisfaction and experience at large. Therefore, the company can instill digital tools within its premises like Wi-Fi to attract more customers and increase its sales. The company can also buy machines with fast and reliable software systems to enhance the quick delivery of services. It will ensure that once a customer places an order, he is responded to immediately hence creating the right image for the company. An excellent public image benefits the company by retaining its loyal customers who can refer friends and family, increasing its sales (Maari, 2018).

Advantages of Chipotle Mexican Grill

The company has several advantages against its competitors in the hospitality industry. It provides tasty food, including salad, tacos, burritos, and burrito bowls, making it widely famous. It has unique and classic cooking methods involving fresh ingredients, pots, pans, stoves, and grills, which other restaurants do not know. Unlike other industry companies, Chipotle Mexican Grill sellse3 foods at reasonable prices to ensure that the customers are satisfied. The food prices in their menu range from 1.40 to 8.00 USD, which is cheap and affordable (Abwanzo, 2017). The company deals with fresh food only.

For this reason, it does not see the need for a microwave or freezer because the leftovers are disposed of and not recooked for sale. The company has refrigerators for storing fresh ingredients, herbs, rice, food spices, and many others. Also, each day the company makes its lime rice, guacamole, and meat from scratch. The company has embraced technology through the invention of an app to be used by customers to order foods of their choice. Therefore, an individual can order food a few minutes before coming to the restaurant, saving time that could be wasted waiting for the food preparation.

Strategies to Exploit the Innovation Breakthroughs

ANYThe strategies that the company could use to exploits innovation breakthroughs are paying attention to the unmet needs and frustrations. The COMPfrom the app used by customers to order goods online. The company could provide customers with an opportunity to share their experiences. It all starts with a customer perspective to help a company uncover problems and frustrations, then design the best solutions from the customer backward. However, some customers think linearly. Hence, the company should match the possibilities with what is needed by the customers. The company could spot and exploit the emerging trends that will obtain feedback from its customers. Innovative entrepreneurs should be flexible enough to welcome change rather than resist it due to its complexity. They look for change to turn discontinuity into an opportunity (Maari, 2018). However, some technological changes are so complex to understand and require special training, increasing its expenses.

Recommendation

I recommend the company to pay attention to the unmet needs and frustrations. It would enable the company to exploit ways to help it hold a good position in the industry. The customers can complain about their experience in a particular restaurant, and therefore, the company learns that the act is unethical. The company will obtain the information from several people despite their age groups, gender, race, or religion. It will encourage the company to embrace diversity in its employees and ensure no discrimination of customers. The lack of diversity is one of the critical weaknesses of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Spotting customers' needs foster innovation to ensure their satisfaction (Griffin, 2020). The company can achieve customer satisfaction through the provision of solutions to their frustrations.

References

Abwanzo, B. (2017). Chipotle Company Assessment. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3278492

Griffin, W. (2020). Perceptions of Hospitality Industry Professionals and Hospitality Faculty on Industry-Academia Collaborations. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/10963758.2020.1791137

Maari, K. (2018). Model of obtaining competitive advantages by the companies of the restaurant industry in the Russian market. Business Strategies, (7), 27-29. https://doi.org/10.17747/2311-7184-2018-7-27-29