Social media, particularly Twitter, doesn’t like very many things. They apparently really don’t like Chipotle’s new “queso”, so much so in fact that during today’s trading, shares for the company dropped a whopping three percent.

Chipotle describes the queso as “complex and slightly spicy”. Twitter users have described it in… well let’s just say different terms than that.

https://twitter.com/jpbrammer/status/909875052304326656

https://twitter.com/mgarasic_5/status/909786755854938112

“Chalk-paste” is a new one I haven’t heard before, and I’m pretty sure Chipotle hasn’t either. Chipotle is trying to change its menu and its image after a disastrous year or so with stories about unkempt restaurants, rats, salmonella and norovirus, and this new queso isn’t quite helping that cause. And Chipotle has certainly noticed.

“What we are seeing now in terms of social sentiment is very similar to what we saw when we began marketwide tests in Colorado and Southern California, yet we were sufficiently encouraged by those tests – both in terms of sentiment from the research we conducted and business results – to roll out the queso nationwide,” Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold told Reuters in an e-mail.

60% of the company’s stock value has been lost in the last two years thanks to the illness outbreaks, dirty restaurants and now harrowing reactions to product changes on social media.

Going on twitter to gauge reactions to a new product is not necessarily the best thing to do when introducing a new product, but apparently Wall Street finds those reactions perfectly reasonable when it comes to the trading floor.

[Reuters via Yahoo Finance]

About Matt Lichtenstadter

Recent Maryland graduate. I've written for many sites including World Soccer Talk, GianlucaDiMarzio.com, Testudo Times, Yahoo's Puck Daddy Blog and more. Houndstooth is still cool, at least to me. Follow me @MattsMusings1 on Twitter, e-mail me about life and potential jobs at matthewaaron9 at Yahoo dot com.