> wrote in message > I believe the Chipotle chain started out as a high-minded venture to
> offer good, high-guality Mexican-style fast food at decent prices, and
> to offer decent employment, management and franchising opportunities for
> minority (mainly Latino) workers. They apparently achieved all of these
> goals, and grew quite a bit on their own before the McD acquisition,
> which seemed to be kept fairly quiet, as such things go.

<snip>
> The employees all seem to be hard working and glad to be doing what
> they're doing, so I assume they're treated well. I've been to three
> different Chipotle stores and within the limitations of the menu they
> offer, the food in each has been good and the service pleasant and
> efficient.

My goals are similar, except for the part about selling to McDonald's
:-)


> Given what you've said about McD's prices in your area, I'd guess that
> it's unlikely a Chipotle outlet would be any more reasonably priced, so
> you probably don't have much to McWorry about...

Maybe not, but after reading your message this morning, I went
straight to my accountant's office and spent the better part of the
day filing trademark paperwork for "rechê", so thanks again for the
heads-up. While checking online to see if the word was taken, I found
out that the name "Café California", which I was planning to use, was
registered in 1996 to someone up in Minas Gerais. No big loss, though;
it's kind of a cool sounding and plausible name (I'm from CA, and it
could be said that the food is too), but it didn't fit 100% with my
business model. "Café" gives the image of a café, whereas my store has
limited space with counters and stools, not meant to be a particularly
comfortable place to linger over coffee. Café Cancún is a popular
nightclub franchised in various cities in Brazil; there is a local
dance place called Café Red; and another guy from California has a
Mexican restaurant up in Balneário Camboriu called Café Matatlntico,
or so I'm told; so I could have gotten away with Café California just
fine if it weren't already taken. But I am in a high-foot-traffic
location downtown, where speed and agility are vital; so my proposed
business name of Rechê Rápido or Rechê-Rápido is more appropriate: the
first word describes the product, and the second describes the
delivery format.

IB

P.S.
For those who haven't seen the Chipotle website, it's pretty groovy:

www.chipotle.com/