Chipotle turns vegetables into music

The instruments included flutes made from corn, trumpets constructed with jalapeños, a horn combining peppers and an avocado pit, lettuce percussion and an onion bass.

Chipotle Mexican Grill has created an original song using instruments made entirely from fresh vegetables, recording the composition at Abbey Road Studios' Studio Two in London. The project, From Ground to Sound, turns ingredients used in Chipotle restaurants into musical instruments and extends the brand's focus on fresh food into audio.

The composition was first teased in Chipotle's 100 Creators advertising campaign in August and will be used as a signature sound across selected campaigns. The track is available on Spotify and Apple Music, while a film documenting the project has also been released.

Chipotle creates music from ingredients used in its restaurants

Every element of the recording was produced using ingredients found in Chipotle restaurants.

Chipotle worked with the London Vegetable Orchestra, a five-member group of classically trained musicians that creates and performs with vegetable instruments. The collaboration involved three months of experimentation and dozens of iterations to establish how different ingredients could produce the required notes, tones and textures.

The fresh ingredients also created a practical challenge. Their shape, moisture and texture change continuously, meaning instruments had to be constructed and played at peak ripeness and could remain usable for less than a day.

London Vegetable Orchestra turns produce into instruments

The limited lifespan of the instruments left the musicians with a short window to assemble, tune, rehearse and record each performance. Rather than eliminating those variations, the production incorporated the changing characteristics of the produce into the music.

Fernando Machado, Chief Brand Officer, Chipotle: "Real food has always been at the center of Chipotle. We use only 53 real ingredients, with fresh preparation happening every day in our restaurants. So we took this principle in a completely new direction: creating our own signature sound. Any brand can release a song or develop a sound mnemonic. What made this worth pursuing was the chance to create a track that felt impossible to separate from Chipotle itself. The instruments, the sound and the story are all rooted in what we do every day."

Patrick Johns, London Vegetable Orchestra: "No two vegetables ever behave exactly the same way. You can carve two identical instruments, but they can respond very differently. Part of the craft is learning not to force an ingredient to sound a certain way but to find the sound that's already there and build the music around it."

KIDS and Beacon Street Studios develop Chipotle sound

The composition was created by Beacon Street Studios with creative direction from advertising agency KIDS. The concept draws on the journey of vegetables from seeds through growth and preparation into food.

The production builds on Chipotle's existing food preparation practices, with restaurant ingredients serving as the central creative material rather than being represented through conventional advertising imagery.

Icaro Doria, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, KIDS: "The role of creativity is to help people experience familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Millions of people know Chipotle's ingredients by how they look, taste and smell. Very few have ever stopped to ask what they sound like. That question led us somewhere no one expected."

www.chipotle.com

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