Chipotle Bags, Cups Now Come With Original Musings By Literary Minds Printed On Them

Reading is cool.

You know who gets lonely dining solo at Chipotle? Author Jonathan Safran Foer. And maybe you, or you, too. Heck, anyone can get bored and lonesome if they forget to bring something to occupy the mind while eating out. For those times, Foer led the charge to get original writing from his fellow literary minds printed up on Chipotle cups.

Because he is a famous author and most of us aren’t, Foer was able to get in touch with Chipotle CEO Steve Ells to pitch his idea for reading material on all those blank cups and bags, after finding himself bored and alone at Chipotle one day.

He recalled that email to Vanity Fair :

“I bet a sh**load of people go into your restaurants every day, and I bet some of them have very similar experiences, and even if they didn’t have that negative experience, they could have a positive experience if they had access to some kind of interesting text,” he said in summing up the missive.

So starting today, bags and cups at Chipotle will come bearing original text by Foer, Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison, George Saunders and Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Lewis.

And lest you think it’s going to be all odes to tacos and nacho sonnets, Foer says Chipotle didn’t muck about in the editorial process for the series, called Cultivating Thought.

“I selected the writers, and insofar as there was any editing, I did it,” Foer said. “I tried to put together a somewhat eclectic group, in terms of styles. I wanted some that were essayistic, some fiction, some things that were funny, and somewhat thought provoking.”

Chipotle Cups Will Now Feature Stories by Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison, and Other Authors [Vanity Fair]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist