How to win free Chipotle burritos ahead of National Burrito Day

Chipotle will be giving away free burritos to a select number of people.

The restaurant chain recently revealed in a press release that they will be launching an interactive game called the Burrito Vault on Tuesday 2 April before National Burrito Day on Thursday 4 April.

The game requires the player to correctly guess the ingredient order for a Chipotle burrito. People can start playing the game at 3 pm EST on 2 April and then again on 3 April using the website unlockburritoday.com.

Each day the player will get four attempts to guess the burrito order and open the burrito vault. The contest highlights Chipotle’s menu, which has more than 1.34 billion possible burrito combinations, the chain said in its press release.

If the combination is guessed correctly, the first 50,000 people will receive a buy-one-get-one coupon code texted to them to be used on 4 April. All players who correctly guess the Chipotle order and unlock the Burrito Vault will be automatically entered into Chipotle’s National Burrito Day sweepstakes, where 53 fans will be randomly selected to win free burritos for a year.

“We are launching Burrito Vault ahead of one of our most popular Chipotdays, National Burrito Day, giving players multiple opportunities to play and win,” said Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief brand officer, in a statement. “Burrito Vault is inspired by the popularity of word puzzles, which have swept the nation and become a daily ritual for so many of our fans and team members.”

For anyone who doesn’t end up creating the correct combination, Chipotle is still offering members of its rewards loyalty scheme to order from the chain and have them delivered with no delivery fee when ordered from Chipotle.com, Chipotle.ca and the Chipotle app with code DELIVER.

The discounts and coupons may come in handy since the chain announced in October 2023 that it would be raising its prices. According to a report from Insider, Laurie Schalow – chief corporate affairs officer at Chipotle – says the fast-food chain will be raising its prices due to “offset inflation”.

In a statement, she said: “For the first time in over a year, we will be taking a modest price increase to offset inflation.”

While Ms Schalow did not reveal which menu items would be affected, the “modest” uptick in prices may be reflected across the board given the current state of the economy. The last time Chipotle announced a price hike was in July 2022, and this led to entrees costing $1 more than usual for customers after the price hike took effect in August. The entrees may be affected once more.

In the first quarter of 2022, Chipotle reportedly raised its prices by 4 per cent on top of another increase back in June 2021, which according to the company, was done to offset increasing employees’ wages.

On a Chipotle subreddit board at the time, longtime fans sounded off on the increase in prices and speculated whether or not the latest price hikes would cause loyal customers to jump ship.

“Good luck. Eventually, people will just stop coming,” one Reddit user wrote, and another replied: “I basically have stopped. Maybe if I happen to be out and need to slam something but even then, it’s not at the top of my list.”

Others doubted that anything could truly deter loyal customers from continuing to buy from the Mexican food chain, with someone writing: “Price increases haven’t stopped people yet lol.” Another person added, “This is what’s killing me. People will complain about prices but yet they will KEEP buying it.”