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[/caption]Carol Forsloff - The Chipotle restaurant chain set out to make a difference in the way it manages that delicate balance between animal rights activists and those who want to continue to eat their meat products while still remaining healthy, something a restaurant near Portland State University believes it has achieved.
Hope Lopez serves up her menu of Mexican items with the kind of smile that is engaging. Her customers wait in lines for that smile that accompanies good food. The same is true of her service staff, a group of young people on a mission to make a difference in the food industry, that helps animal rights activists and people who like to eat meat get along.
“There’s a way to achieve balance, “ Lopez tells us. “Our business is the way to do that, at least that is its intent. Chipotle stresses caring for the environment, especially the environment where animals are raised. There is cruelty in the food business in how animals are treated. The founder of our restaurant chain has tried to end that with his practice of making sure the animals used in the food we serve are not treated cruelly.”
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[/caption]The restaurant sits near Portland State University, where the food demands are great but the choices of fare various for students that are “city fied and fed” enough to want the best. The fare, as tasted by a hungry journalist wandering through Portland on a Sunday afternoon, is favorable to the most discerning palates of those who wander far. If Chipotle is seeking great taste as a leading factor in its food, the burrito bowl is a menu item that can make the most critical connoisseur stand up and cheer for that and the wholesome notion of having wholesome food and yet retaining animal rights as well.
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[/caption]Portland is a way-station for protest, a place where the environment and the care of animals and going green is celebrated in many ways. Food is one of those places where balance has been sought, although there is a seeming, never-ending protest about how that balance can be achieved.
Chipotle's local restaurant manager tells us balance is in the menu that stresses care for animals but the rights of humans as well, to eat right and make sure that the food that is eaten is healthy and developed in a “green” and caring way that Lopez underlines. “We can all agree to get along if we try to find ways like my company has, to serve food right and fair.”