"fast food with a conscience"

On Tuesday evening around 5:30 PM I was coming back from the St. Paul campus via the connector. I hadn't eaten since 11:00 and my stomach was growling, so I decided to buy dinner on campus instead of going all the way home first, cuz that'd take ~fifty minutes. Money is always a concern (I'm trying to save, Keynes' theories be damned) and I am uncomfortable spending more than six or seven bucks on my dinner, whatever it is.

Thought about getting a burrito from Chipotle (both because it was two blocks away, inexpensive, and their veggie burrito is delicious) but then remembered a picture I'd seen a few days earlier of a vandalized ad for Chipotle. Despite their reputation as the fast-food restaurant with a conscience, I decided not to go there, thinking instead that it would be a good idea to walk to the Hard Times café on the West bank. Advantages to going to Hard Times:

The food would probably be healthier for me, as it's made using vegan ingredients that I doubt have ever been tainted by HFCS. Even though Chipotle buys 100% of its pork from non-CAFO sources, the animals are raised on vegetarian diets without antibiotics and hormones, and have room to move around (stats from AlterNet which I generally trust) . The standard includes animals raised without antibiotics or growth hormones, given room to move around, and fed vegetarian diets.; about half the price, meaning the relative value of my dollars increased there in comparison to what they were worth at Chipotle, in terms of the quality* of the food I would receive; and I would be keeping money in our community of Minneapolis by spending money locally at a place of whose business practices I approve. If someone had to have a monopoly on my dinner that night, I'd be damned if it wasn't Hard Times: even though Chipotle is no longer virtually owned by McDonald's, Inc., it's a huge chain that really doesn't need one more consumer's business. Hard Times as a local restaurant is much more accountable to its customers.

*Of course I would have received a lot MORE food if I'd chosen Chipotle -- their burritos are all but impossible to finish. But as we've seen from Ch. 1 of Omnivore's dilemma, quantity is not as valuable nor does it substitute for quality, and pounds of white rice, frozen corn and fried onions wrapped in a corn tortilla do not supersede in healthiness a smaller (i.e. appropriately sized) portion of barley, lentils, and long-grained rice.

So I walked over to the West Bank and had some soup and whole-wheat bread (wild rice and barley sounded better to me at the time than the other soup of the day). I was satisfied then both in terms of hunger and the purchase I'd made, and I still am; a local vegan community-run restaurant is in my mind much better than any corporation, no matter how sustainable... companies just really don't need to be that large. But today to write this blog I did some research as to what that sign was referring, to see whether my perception against Chipotle was still justified. I found my answer through AlterNet!

Chipotle for a while refused to patronize the Fair Food program, which has been calling for an increase in migrant workers' wage rates by $0.01/lb (the article claims this amounts to a 64% increase in wages for tomato pickers). This refusal is ostensibly what inspired the vandalism of the Chipotle ad, especially in light of the letter sent by CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) to Chipotle founder Steve Ells: "Chipotle cannot claim the same integrity for the tomatoes it serves as it does for its meat, much less guarantee its customers that the tomatoes in its burritos were not picked by slaves."

Since then Chipotle has agreed to buy their tomatoes from East Coast Growers, which has everyone pleased. It's not much, and the migrant workers are still going to be exploited to an extent (and on the same website there is an article detailing exactly why migrant workers now lead lives not much different from those of slaves) but... it may be a start.

Here's an exchange between Chipotle and an activist with Change.org, who are understandably ^^ about the decision.