Restaurants offering limited quantities of popular items—see Cronuts and limited edition burgers—isn't a new phenomenon in a world where food tourism knows no bounds. Now one new food purveyor is taking the exclusivity factor to the next level, selling just 100 burritos (plus a few sides) via delivery only on Fridays between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Meet Boom Burritos, the newest addition to NYC's foodiot bucket list.
Zachariah Reitano and chef Dominick Costa began their operation last Friday, letting a few friends and some Snapchatting Columbia students in on what they were up to. In a restaurant kitchen near the school, Costa, who attended the French Culinary Institute after graduating, and Reitano—who are also both graduates—quietly rolled up their burritos, stuffed mason jars full of guacamole and tres leches cake, and delivered their creations via next wave delivery platforms like UberEats and DoorDash. This week—and for the foreseeable future—they're aiming to do the same.
Their burrito menu includes a fully customizable list of options, from meats to toppings to type of tortilla; they're even doing a "post-workout" option with kale, quinoa and Greek yogurt. To learn more about their secret operation, we chatted with the duo about burrito ingenuity, the future of food delivery, and a mutual love for sour cream.
Why burritos, and why only a hundred of them? Well, Dom is an excellent chef and makes some of the best guacamole and burritos I've ever had. And as for "why a hundred," I think, for us, it's a wonderful side project and when we do a hundred it lets us do each one with great care. Most people order delivery for convenience, but that doesn't mean we can't package it beautifully and handle it with care and prepare each one like it's for our own lunch. When we do a hundred we get to take care of each one a little bit better I think.
(courtesy Boom Burritos)
So what is the impetus for the pop-up or limited-services model as opposed to maybe doing the market model or one of the other popular ways to test out a concept?
Reitano: I think that's a great question. It helps that Dom managed a couple restaurants on the UWS and only had one day off, which is why we do it on Fridays. I had just stopped working on a start-up that I started working on after college and wanted to continue to build products. It was a wonderful creative outlet for both of us. One of the restaurants that he had managed let us use their kitchen on his day off, so we had the opportunity to use a licensed kitchen for free, so that was one of the reasons we did it that way.
Costa: When we were thinking about the idea, we wanted to do something that is popular, one, and burritos are super popular, and something that could be done efficiently and quickly and could kinda go with the trend we're trying to jump off of.
Reitano: The other thing is that burritos travel really well and there is a lot of variety with a few ingredients. So maybe there's even just ten, fifteen ingredients, but you can have thousands of options between those ingredients, so really anyone can get what they want. Vegetarians, people who are gluten-free. We also wanted a healthier burrito that has things like spinach and kale and quinoa that sort of lets people leverage that variety, while we can still be two people maintaining a solid kitchen.
And what about the dessert?
Reitano: The dessert is all Dom. It was recently described by a customer as being "cake on a cloud." Dom is a classically trained pastry chef and it works perfectly well with the theme of burritos. The tres leches and the guacamole come in mason jars, which are really helpful as I said before for travel. The important thing about tres leches is that the three types of milk can actually soak into the cake up until the point when someone is eating it and that's not the case if you have to cut out a slice and transport it. So we like that because even the transportation element is helpful.
L: Packaging; R: Reitano and Costa (courtesy Boom Burritos)
You mentioned before that packaging is really important to your product. Can you talk a little bit more about how the food is received—there's a handwritten note if I'm not mistaken? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Reitano: We only make one hundred for a wide variety of reasons. Each order comes with a handwritten letter in Dom's handwriting, because my handwriting is terrible, and it comes in a canvas drawstring backpack, the kind where you pull the string on the two sides. The bags are also stamped with our logo, which is an avocado and in the center is like a bomb icon.
So this is week two, very early in the process, but is this something you guys anticipate expanding or moving to a different market? Or are you just excited about having this very small, intimate, direct relationship-with-the-consumer model that you have right now?
Reitano: So I think the answer to this—and it's a cop-out, because it's both—is that if it goes really well and there's a lot of traction, we would absolutely expand, or ideally shift the location of our kitchen to another place that people order more delivery from, probably Midtown or further down south, because people both work and live in those areas. As far as maintaining close relationships with the consumers, I'd love to do something like at my last startup where technology really comes into play for us, so that we can maintain relationships with them.
When each order is done online, we know people's names and emails and addresses, so as people start to order over time, we can recommend different things to them because we know that they've ordered three times, for example. We know where the order goes, we know that they like it left on the doorstep, or they like us to leave off the sour cream or they always ask for extra sour cream. Or, they only order on Tuesdays, so on Monday night we can email and ask them if they want to order it again. We can do really interesting things with technology that I think enables us to build a really close relationship with customers and provide better customer-service than places I receive delivery from. So I think we're really excited to have that intimate experience through delivery.
I hate to think what my local delivery spot thinks of my ordering habits from the places I order from all the time. Secretly judging my extra sour cream choices!
Reitano: Dom's a big sour cream man.
Boom Burritos delivers their food anywhere in Manhattan on Fridays between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Burritos begin at $11.99 and can be pre-ordered before Friday.
