If you crave a burrito that is bigger than your head, you can get one at Chipotle, Qdoba, Baja Fresh, Illegal Pete’s or Moe’s, to name a few.
None of these chains originated the idea of a white-flour tortilla stuffed with rice, beans, cheese, lettuce, eggs, potatoes, guacamole, tomatoes, sour cream, salsa, beef, pork, chicken or even goat.
The burrito was invented long ago in either northern Mexico or the southwestern United States, depending on which nugget of fast-food folklore you swallow.
The word burrito literally means “little donkey.” So technically, today’s modern burrito chains are manufacturing and distributing really big little donkeys.
Chipotle, which opened its first store in Denver in 1993, is a giant in the big little-donkey field. Its founder sold out to McDonald’s beginning in 1998. Today, Chipotle has about 450 stores and opens a new location almost every week.
Douglas Bolle, 43, learned to assemble big little donkeys when he got a job at Chipotle in February 1999. He quit in February 2001. Then he moved to Las Vegas and opened his own big little-donkey shop, Zabas Mexican Grill.
Bolle has since expanded to three stores – all in Nevada – but compared with Chipotle, he remains a tiny player in the big little-donkey business.
Chipotle didn’t sell burritos in Las Vegas when Bolle opened Zabas. Chipotle didn’t open there until August 2003. Then, last year, it filed a lawsuit against Bolle for allegedly stealing its ideas.
“The ‘look and feel’ of a Zabas Mexican Grill is confusingly similar to the ‘look and feel’ of a Chipotle Mexican Grill,” the big burrito-maker claims in a lawsuit filed in Jefferson County.
Chipotle accuses Bolle of copying everything from restaurant design to menus, pricing and service. When it comes to Bolle, clearly the company still has a big chipotle on its shoulder.
Bolle denies all of his former employer’s claims. He was a store manager but says he never learned the recipes because a lot of the food was prepared in a commissary and came in bags.
“I don’t know how you could figure out a recipe if something comes in a bag,” he said. “I knew what it smelled like, and that’s about it.”
Bolle said he and his partners worked for more than a year developing their own burrito enterprise. “We did everything we could to not look like Chipotle,” he said. “We don’t want people coming in here and thinking that we are them.”
Zabas has 60 employees, and Bolle says his whole life is riding on his restaurants’ success. To him, this is a clear case of the big burrito trying to flatten a tiny tortilla.
“We’re not out to get the little guy,” Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said. “We were once the little guy too. … This is about honoring agreements and protecting intellectual property.”
Intellectual property sounds like a pretty expansive and complex legal doctrine to apply to a burrito. But when Bolle took a $28,000 a year job at Chipotle, he signed a confidentiality agreement.
Plenty of chains have ripped off Chipotle – can you say Qdoba? – but Bolle signed an agreement promising that he wouldn’t. If Chipotle has its way, Bolle will never make another burrito again.
“It’s silly,” Bolle said. “It’s like comparing In-N-Out Burger and Fatburger.”
Denver restaurant consultant John Imbergamo says Chipotle’s claim is reasonable. (He’d better because he’s chums with Chipotle founder Steve Ells.)
“They are not suing Moe’s, Qdoba, Baja Fresh or the 100 other people who are out there in the burrito world,” Imbergamo said. “They are suing Zabas because the guy used to work for them, and he signed a nondisclosure agreement.”
Bolle isn’t backing down. He has filed counterclaims and demanded a jury trial.
“There are only so many ways you can make a burrito,” said Bolle’s lawyer, Paul Wood of Moye White in Denver. “They are trying to tell this guy that he can’t work in any type of fast-food burrito restaurant because somehow he’s going to use something he learned at Chipotle.”
In court papers, Wood wrote that Chipotle’s suit is “barred by the equitable doctrines of in pari delicto and unclean hands.” I don’t know what that means.
But the next time I order one of those big little donkeys, I’m going to ask the server to step up to the sink.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at ; 303-820-1967; or alewis@denverpost.com.
