chipotle teases new menu item after chicken al pastor says goodbye in late august chipotle mexican grill inc shares nearly 9 in the afterhours session wednesday after the fastcasual restaurant chain beat wall street expectations for its quarterly profit but called for a slightly weaker current quarter and said that inflation hit some of its most popular menu items food beverage and packaging costs were lower in the second quarter than a year ago benefiting from price increases the company took last year and from lower avocado prices chipotle said those were offset in part by by inflation across several food costs primarily beef tortillas dairy salsa beans and rice the company said in a call with analysts after the results chief executive brian niccol said the company plans to focus on growth in the number of transactions chipotle executives also teased a new menu item after its chicken al pastor special item ends its run in late august chicken al pastor helped chipotle navigate inflation because it shifted people away from more expensive higher foodcost steak so the company experienced a lowgrade inflation niccol said in the call asked by an analyst if chicken al pastor could become a permanent menu item niccol said chipotle definitely will go back and evaluate as the food struck a chord with a lot of people and i can understand why the challenge for the company that if it wants to add something permanently on its menu it has to remove another item so it has to be sure it understands potential tradeoffs he said for the third quarter we do think theres going to be a bump up in food cost attributable to that same kind of lowgrade inflation that the company expects to continue into the current quarter but without the offset from cheaper avocados and the al pastor item he said chipotle cmg earned 3418 million or 1232 a share in the second quarter compared with 2599 million or 925 a share in the second quarter of 2022 revenue rose nearly 14 to 251 billion the company said with comparablerestaurant sales up 74 analysts polled by factset had expected chipotle to report adjusted earnings of 1231 a share on sales of 253 billion samestore sales were seen up 75 chipotle guided for thirdquarter comparablerestaurant sales growth in the low to midsingledigit range compared with consensus growth of around 6 for the full year the company called for comparablerestaurant sales growth in the mid to highsingledigit range shares of chipotle have gained more than 50 so far this year compared with an advance of around 19 for the sp 500 index  this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal