Chipotle Adding First Drive-Thru At Ohio Restaurant

One lucky Chipotle in Ohio will be the site of the restaurant's first drive-thru window. During a meeting with investors on Tuesday, the company announced it would test out the first drive-thru at a Buckeye State location but did not say which store would be getting the upgrade, Business Insider reports.

Chipotle has famously never had a drive-thru window at any of its restaurants. Since the chain's rise to national prominence, a chorus of requests have poured in via social media asking for a drive-thru window option to be added.

"We need to evolve the Chipotle experience," Mark Crumpacker, Chipotle chief marketing officer, said in the investors call.

The company is hoping the drive-thru announcement will help move past a black eye Chipotle received in 2015 when some of its food became tainted with e.coli, leading to 22 customers being hospitalized in 14 states. The Centers for Disease and Control were not able to link the outbreak to a specific food item because "many ingredients are cooked together and served in several different food items," Patch reported shortly after the investigation concluded.

After two years of relative silence, the company felt old wounds reopen over the summer, when customers at a Virginia Chipotle became ill after dining. The highly contagious and wholly unpleasant norovirus is the suspected culprit.

It appears the company is hoping that by changing up its food-delivery model it might bring back customers it lost two years ago and may be losing this summer. Chipotle is one of the only "fast food" restaurants in the country that doesn't have a drive-thru window.

The buzz for the drive-thru is already gaining on Twitter. So even if the drive-thru addition is a publicity stunt to drive out the noise of possible norovirus infections, it appears to be working.

Image via Miosotis jade/Wikimedia Commons