'Cultivate Festival' is vintage Chipotle.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: BUSINESS as usual

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL HAS BEEN different from the start, beginning with the fact that the founder, Steve Ells, came from a culinary institute, not a business school.

Then there's the way the Denver-based chain with the "Food with Integrity" mission statement has marketed itself -or hasn't. Chipotle has grown to more than 1,300 restaurants yet had never aired a national TV commercial in its 18-year history until this year's Grammy Awards--a cute but serious message in which Weeble-like characters see the meat industry magically transformed with humane animal-raising practices, a Chipotle trademark.

That stands in stark contrast to the typical fast-food chain approach, which Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold describes as "lots of limited-time or seasonal offers, heavy television and heavy media support for those offers, which causes temporary spikes in sales."

"That's a very expensive way to market a restaurant," Arnold says. "We've always maintained that the way people find great restaurants isn't by television advertising, it's through word-of-mouth, it's through reviews and references from friends and things like that," he says. "It's more about building relationships with people that are more meaningful and less transactional in nature."

That approach is evident in Chipotle's creation of an all-day event dubbed "Cultivate Festival," slated for Oct. 6 in Denver's City Park that will bring together food, farmers, chefs, artisans and musicians, along with more than a dozen Colorado craft beer makers. Chipotle held the first such Cultivate Festival last year in Chicago and drew 17,000 attendees.

"For year two, we thought it would make a great time to bring it to our hometown," Arnold said. "Of course, Denver is our oldest market; it's our most dense market. And the city has a great and really up-and-coming food scene."

Joe Osborne, the marketing director for Avery Brewing, one of the participating craft brewers, says Avery was approached by Chipotle about the event and didn't need coaxing.

"It was pretty much a no-brainer," Osborne says. "Our brand is all about high-quality beer, a lot of care and consideration going into what we're putting into it ingredient-wise. There's a lot of synergy there."

There's also a philanthropic aspect. Proceeds from beer and wine sales will go to a program called The Lunch Box, which helps transition school lunchrooms from processed foods to...