Before Chipotle came along, there was Freebirds, the original burrito restaurant chain for us in Austin. It’s another local chain or place that I really enjoy but it originated in College Station, TX (the anti-Austin), thus it’s not in the Austintatious category.
A burrito place like Taco Bell? Not exactly. At Taco Bell, Del Taco or Taco Cabana, a burrito is one of many things those places sell. With Freebirds, the burrito is the star and each is custom made to your specification by the one employee who is taking your order. You walk up to the starting point, you tell the Freebird employee the size (Regular, Monster, Half or Super Monster), the flavor of tortilla, meat or not, rice, type of cheese or not (they do cater to vegetarians), sauce, vegetables, etc.
Big deal, so what.
As I’ve written before with Waterloo Records and Book People, it’s the employees who make the difference along with the little things. I’ll go with the nice touches first. All prices are “tax included” rounded up to the nearest quarter, no chump change as they say. They have bins to recycle all the aluminum foil used to wrap your food. Lastly, they sell funny T-shirts plugging their product such as “unwrap my monster.” The employees are the other clincher. They’re allowed to have fun by wearing funny pins, T-Shirts, tatoos, body piercings, nicknames, be loud, so on. Probably as long as they’re clean, efficient and polite.
Here’s the additional rub, unlike other fast-food places in Texas; the employees are teenagers, college students and young adults from all ethnicities. To the argument about Mexicans coming to America to do the jobs citizens don’t want to do I say “HA!” Freebirds shows that there are ways and incentives to get citizens, especially young people to do “undesirable” jobs in this country. Meanwhile, their burritos aren’t much more expensive than Chipotle’s, thus flushing the economic argument down the toilet. I make the observation not as a nativist or xenophobe but as a person who tires from the false mantra about younger citizens being too lazy to get a job or they feel they’re “too good” for one. Besides, I’d rather support Freebirds which does more for the local economy like the other places I mentioned in Austintatious.