As Waukee continues to grow, a variety of franchises are on their way to making another home. A very popular restaurant choice for many has just made its mark with the Chipotle grand opening in Waukee, Iowa.
Options: Since 1993, Chipotle has offered its customers various options, and Waukee’s new addition did not disappoint. Options include either a bowl or burrito, two different kinds of rice, eight choices of protein, ten different types of toppings/sauces, along with everyone’s favorite chips and queso and/or guacamole, but their variety of options does not stop at what goes into a burrito or bowl. They provide different types of drinks such as sparkling juice, bottled water, white and chocolate milk, bottled sodas, Italian sodas, fountain drinks and their specialty lemonades and Frescas. These drinks are limited to Chipotle only, driving customers in as they are a one-of-a-kind restaurant with self-serve drinks. These flavors consist of regular lemonade, hibiscus lemonade, mandarin agua fresca and berry agua fresca. I had the regular lemonade and was very impressed with the overall flavor and now understand the excitement over these specialty drinks.
Customer Service: I went to the new restaurant during a bit of a rush, around dinner time. There were a good amount of customers in the store. I waited about 10-15 minutes to get my bowl, granted there were people in front of me that had larger orders. When I got up to the counter to order, I was greeted kindly. The workers made all of the options known right away. Once I got to order, the process was fairly quick. All of the people behind the counter were kind and friendly.
Price: I ended up ordering a bowl with brown rice, chicken, queso, and corn. I also got the chips and queso side for the full experience and a medium lemonade. My total price at the end was $19.10. This pricing is more expensive than competing restaurants in the area such as Pancheros. The same order at Pancheros is $17.25. While this might not be much of a difference, some people might prefer to save a few dollars over what they prefer taste-wise. While no one wants to pay almost $20 for a meal, I don’t think this price is too far out of the range for this type of restaurant.
Overall taste: I will start out by saying that I personally prefer Pancheros over Chipotle. However, the bowl was overall pretty good tasting and I was impressed by the amount of each ingredient put into the bowl. A common problem with restaurants like this is that they may not give the exact amount that you want. I was given a great amount of each ingredient, which is better than having not enough and having to ask for more. The chicken was partially burnt, which threw off the flavor slightly. When I tried the chips with the queso, the queso was great and I would recommend it to anyone, with the chips being stale. It took away from the great taste of the queso. With that being said, I understand that other people have certain tastes that I don’t and people have different views on Pancheros versus Chipotle. I was impressed with what they had to offer and overall I give the new Chipotle location in Waukee a 6/10.
