Apps Take Center Stage in Chipotle’s Food Fight

The past two weeks have brought a stream of earnings reports from major restaurant chains that, in some ways, offered a familiar portrait of the industry. Price hikes continue to be a key tool for juicing sales growth, including at Chili’s and Burger King, while pressure from higher wages in a tight labor market continued to weigh on profits at operators from McDonald’s Corp. to Cheesecake Factory Inc.

But there was one way this batch of earnings seemed different: The impact of digital ordering and delivery started to show itself in more pronounced ways than we’ve seen previously.