Chipotle Mexican Grill has unveiled “From Ground to Sound,” an original song recorded inside Abbey Road Studios’ Studio Two using instruments made entirely from fresh vegetables, turning the same real ingredients prepared in its restaurants every day into the sound of the brand. The composition was first teased in the final frames of Chipotle’s 100 Creators ads that premiered in August  and will continue as a signature sound across select Chipotle campaigns. Every note, beat and texture was performed using ingredients found in Chipotle restaurants, transformed into playable instruments including flutes made from corn, trumpets built using jalapeños, a horn created from peppers and an avocado pit, lettuce percussion and an onion bass.  To pull it off, Chipotle teamed up with the London Vegetable Orchestra, a five-member ensemble of classically trained musicians specializing in creating and performing with instruments made from vegetables. The process required three months of experimentation and dozens of iterations to determine how ingredients like corn, jalapeños and bell peppers could be transformed into instruments capable of producing the right notes, tones and textures.

Even then, there was little room for error. Fresh produce continuously changes in shape, texture and moisture, meaning the instruments must be built and played at peak ripeness and remain usable for less than a day. That gave the musicians only a brief window to assemble, tune, rehearse and record before the sound began to change. The result turned the natural variability of fresh ingredients into part of the creative process, using the same real produce Chipotle serves every day, without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.

“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,” Fernando Machado, Chief Brand Officer at Chipotle commented. “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.”

“No two vegetables ever behave exactly the same way,” Patrick Johns of the London Vegetable Orchestra commented.”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.”

Every day, Chipotle crew members prepare real ingredients by hand, from chopping vegetables to making fresh guacamole. For “From Ground to Sound,” those same ingredients became the creative medium. The original composition, created by Beacon Street Studios with creative direction from advertising agency KIDS, was inspired by the energy of vegetables growing from seeds into nourishment.

“The role of creativity is to help people experience familiar things in unfamiliar ways,” Icaro Doria, Founder and Chief Creative Officer at KIDS commented. “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.”