America’s favorite Mexican fast-food restaurants: survey

In This Article:

Though many would argue that Mexican fast-food in America is not authentic, that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t crazy about their tacos and burritos. But, which restaurant chain is America’s favorite?

Market Force Information, a customer experience management company, conducted a survey of over 7,600 American adults to find out their favorite fast-food restaurants — and when it comes to Mexican food, one took the top spot by a narrow margin.

Despite its previous woes, Chipotle (CMG), was voted America’s favorite fast-casual Mexican restaurant for the third year in a row.

Participants were asked about their satisfaction levels with their most recent visit and their likelihood to recommend the restaurant to others. The results were then averaged to establish the Composite Loyalty Index (CLI) score. Only chains that received at least 100 customer responses were analyzed. Participants were also asked about their dining experiences, including delivery services, visit frequency, brand engagement, customer experience and problem experience.

(David Foster/Yahoo Finance)
(David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

While Chipotle took the crown, Moe’s Southwest Grill was a close second, and El Pollo Loco (LOCO) was only a hair behind in third place. Del Taco (TACO) and Taco Bell (YUM) came in at the bottom of the list. Qdoba, another big taco chain, ranked third place in last year’s study, but did not receive enough votes in this year’s survey to make the list.

Though there has been a bit of a decline in visits to fast-food Mexican restaurants, about 59% of customers visited at least once a month in the past 90 days. The study showed that 46% of customers dine in at the restaurant, while 30% prefer to go through the drive through. Twenty-two percent opt to take out directly from the restaurant and only 2% get their food delivered directly from the store or through a third-party delivery service.

Tech usage grows among dine-in customers (Market Force Information)
Tech usage grows among dine-in customers (Market Force Information)

Of those who choose to dine in, more are placing their orders using tech. In the study, 87% said that they order at the counter, which is down from 93% last year and 92% in 2017. Whereas, 2% now order at a kiosk, which is an increase from the two previous years. The use of tablets to place orders has skyrocketed this year to 10%. Only about 6% ordered via tabled in 2018 and 4% in 2017.

Nearly 43% of customers complained that orders were inaccurate, and one in every four customers said the wait times were too long. Poor food and beverage quality ranked the third biggest complaint among customers. El Pollo Loco actually had the lowest problem experience and is the best at resolving problems. Meanwhile, Chipotle received the second most problem experiences and Taco Bell saw the highest amount of issues among the restaurants.