Is Chipotle Leveraging AI to Reengage Lapsed Customers?

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG is expanding its use of artificial intelligence within its digital platform, with a focus on strengthening customer engagement. The company stated that AI-driven tools are being used to support personalized communication and targeted outreach, particularly to re-engage lapsed or less-frequent users.

The initiative operates within Chipotle’s existing digital ecosystem, including its loyalty program and mobile ordering channels. Data analytics and machine learning tools are being applied to tailor messaging based on customer activity and purchase behavior. This enables the company to direct specific offers and communications to defined customer segments.

Digital sales remain a meaningful portion of total revenues, and increasing frequency within the loyalty member base continues to be a priority. Targeted offers and personalized outreach are intended to encourage incremental visits. The company continues to adjust and refine engagement strategies as it gathers additional performance data.

Looking ahead, AI-powered personalization is positioned as a tool to enhance digital effectiveness within the existing operating framework. As loyalty participation and digital ordering remain central to customer interaction, targeted engagement efforts are becoming a more visible component of Chipotle’s evolving digital strategy.

How It Stacks Up to Competitors

Chipotle’s use of AI-driven personalization places it alongside, but distinct from, the digital and technology strategies being pursued by McDonald's Corporation MCD and Yum! Brands, Inc. YUM.

McDonald’s continues to emphasize digital scale and systemwide engagement, supported by the rapid expansion of its loyalty platform and a standardized global technology stack. Management highlighted loyalty as a driver of visit frequency and engagement, while positioning AI-enabled tools primarily around operational execution, including voice ordering, shift management and restaurant-level efficiency. While these initiatives are designed to enhance customer experience and throughput at scale, management did not explicitly frame AI as a mechanism for identifying or reengaging lapsed customers through targeted personalization.

Yum! Brands, by contrast, has leaned more directly into AI-driven personalized marketing as part of its digital growth strategy. Management cited investments in the Byte by Yum! platform and its loyalty ecosystem as contributors to accelerating digital sales growth, with digital mix approaching 60% systemwide. Yum! Brands emphasized platform ownership and data control as advantages that enable personalized engagement across brands and markets, though the company’s commentary focused on broad-based digital momentum rather than explicit lapsed-user reactivation.

Within this competitive landscape, Chipotle’s approach stands out for its specificity. Management directly referenced the use of AI models to identify lapsed and at-risk users and to design targeted reengagement journeys based on prior visit behavior and estimated lifetime value. Rather than emphasizing digital scale or platform breadth, Chipotle framed AI as a precision tool within its loyalty and digital ecosystem, aimed at improving frequency and reactivating less-engaged customers. This more targeted application differentiates Chipotle’s strategy from the broader, scale-oriented digital initiatives highlighted by McDonald’s and Yum! Brands.

CMG’s Stock Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of Chipotle have plunged 29.6% in the past year compared with the industry’s fall of 6.5%.

CMG One-Year Price Performance

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From a valuation standpoint, CMG trades at a forward price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of 3.76, below the industry’s average of 3.68.

CMG’s P/S Ratio (Forward 12-Month) vs. Industry

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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CMG’s fiscal 2026 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year decline of 2.6%. The EPS estimates for fiscal 2026 have declined in the past 30 days.

EPS Trend of CMG Stock

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CMG stock currently has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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