Chipotle, Panda Express and other food chains are moving into rural America after Covid killed many independent restaurants.
Small-town residents are longing for new food options, and Chipotle's successful playbook is leading it and other other fast-casual restaurant chains, including Cava and Panda Express, to eye more stores in rural America.
The same scene is repeating itself in small town after small town Like Bennington, Somerset, Pennsylvania, population 15,000, recently welcomed its first Chipotle to town with a ribbon cutting, balloons, and local dignitaries. "There are some things that make Chipotle unique," Gonzalez said. There is widespread acceptance and appetite for Chipotle's cuisine; its size gives it the scale to keep price points down — the price of a meal at Chipotle is comparable to that of one of the big fast-food chains. And its"Chipotlane" — digital order pickup store format — provides another source of revenue.
The trend has prompted Cava to locate its stores in smaller markets like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Lynchburg, Virginia. But Schulman says there's plenty of room for Cava to grow and scale up to locate in even smaller towns in the future, and he added that comparing Cava to Chipotle is imperfect, pointing out the disparity in the number of restaurants and years in existence. .
"The U.S. has experienced general saturation of restaurant concepts, particularly within large chains searching for incremental growth avenues," Esposito said. But while the cities and suburbs are saturated with restaurants, Covid dealt a blow to independent restaurants and small chains that were already struggling, leaving a void for better-capitalized chains to move in, while ones that haven't moved in are viewing small markets favorably.
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