Steve Ells
Founder and Chief Concept Officer, Counter Service. On 1 show, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestoreatkernel.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Steve Ells is best known as the founder, former CEO, and former Executive Chairman of Chipotle Mexican Grill, where he pioneered the fast-casual category. After departing Chipotle, he launched the restaurant venture Kernel Foods, which later rebranded as the artisanal sandwich concept Counter Service.
1shows
3appearances
36statements
8resolved
6supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Steve Ells said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Steve Ells: Robots will not displace restaurant cooking anytime soon
“And so the, your question, will robots displace that? I mean, maybe someday, but certainly not Not anywhere in the near future.”
Ells: Kernel needs only three peak-period workers versus twelve at typical restaurants
“And so where a typical fast casual restaurant might have, you know, a dozen folks at peak period Colonel would have three.”
Ells: Restaurant models reliant on large, high-turnover staffs are unsustainable
“I know for sure that continuing to operate these systems that's heavy, heavy, heavy on, on numbers of employees who turn over very frequently is not sustainable.”
Steve Ells shut down both Kernel restaurants after less than a year
“So we closed down the two Kernel restaurants after less than a year spent a couple of months you know, retooling, and opened counter service”
Steve Ells: Kernel will offer restaurant workers stock options and full benefits
“And since we only have three people we'll be able to afford those higher wages. Plus I think our Purpose is bigger than our product. Being able to address global warming, being able to address some of the inequality with pay for folks in, in, in the world of f…”
Ells: Fast food wages stay low because restaurant margins cannot afford raises
“I think you see depressed wages because margins are so tight, right? It's, and I think these operators would love to pay their folks more, but the model just can't afford to do it.”
Ells: Fast-casual hospitality does not require face-to-face interaction
“While hospitality may not be face to face, With the customers, it's providing a really good experience through the app. It's providing reliability on service times. It's making sure that everything that we serve is delicious.”
Ells: Cheap strip mall leases and assembly lines drove unprecedented ROI
“With Chipotle, we were going into strip malls. Often in the inexpensive center units, not the more desirable end caps. This was early on. So the investment was very, very modest. And our production system or that our service format really was an assembly line.…”
Ells: Chipotle sold more carnitas after raising prices to use premium pork
“So, you know, I remember when I put Naiman ranch pork on the menu, I had to increase the price of the carnitas burrito, and I think it increased by about a dollar or something. And so in the world of fast food, that was just not understood. I mean, gotta remem…”
Ells: 52 people contracted E. coli during the 2015 Chipotle outbreak
“Over, over a one month period from basically mid October to mid November 52 people got sick with E. Coli.”
Steve Ells: Chipotle succeeded by ignoring industry demands for broader menus
“In the early days of Chipotle, when I presented the offerings, people said, well, Steve, you just, you're not offering enough to people. They want more variety. And I said, no, no, no, people can make all different kinds of combinations of the base ingredients…”
Steve Ells believes Chipotle might have grown larger with better work-life balance
“Maybe it could have been even bigger had I been more balanced.”
Ells: 25 to 30% of Greenhouse Emissions Come From Food
“And I come to understand that, you know, 25 or 30% or so of the greenhouse gases that we emit come from what we eat, and the vast majority of that comes from animal sources.”
Ells: Founder of plant-based chain Kernel still eats meat and fish
“So Guy, I'm not I don't adhere to a plant-based diet. I still eat meat. I still eat fish. But I've noticed over the years I eat less and less meat.”
Ells: Kernel will centralize food prep and deliver hourly via bicycle
“So we do all of our preparation, all of the food prep in a central kitchen, and that will service a couple of handfuls of restaurants within a, Five to 10 minute bicycle ride. And we'll put this prepped food into totes and load the totes onto a wagon and pull …”
Ells: Kernel operates out of 800 square feet with lower build-out costs
“We can operate out of 800 square feet, where a typical fast casual might be 2500 square feet, and our build-out cost is a lot less.”
Ells: Kernel requires no grease hoods, fire suppression, or gas lines
“A typical fast casual restaurant will have a grease hood, fire suppression systems, gas lines, grease traps, you know, all of these sort of infrastructure pieces. We don't need any of that.”
Steve Ells: Kernel raised $36M Series A to open 15 restaurants
“I just completed my series a round and raised thirty six million. And so, so, you know, that'll take us through the next couple of years and that will be a lot to open up 15 restaurants.”
Steve Ells: Fast-food industry turnover is typically around 165%
“One of the problems is that we see extraordinarily high turnover in the industry. I think it's something like a 165% is, is typical.”
Ells: Kernel will rely on human teams for at least the next decade
“There will always be a place, you know, for our teams to operate the kernel model for the foreseeable future, and I'm talking about the next decade at least, right?”
Ells: McDonald's invested around $360 million in Chipotle over seven years
“Over a seven-year period, I think they put in three hundred and sixty million dollars or so, but the majority of that was in the last couple of years.”
Ells: We refused McDonald's franchisees because our unit economics were too good
“Well, so McDonald's has a very strong franchise system, and their franchisees obviously wanted, wanted a part of Chipotle. And, you know, certainly they would have been capable of operating Chipotle. There are a lot of good operators in the McDonald's system. …”
Ells: We blanch avocados and peppers in boiling water for five seconds
“And so what we do with this avocado now is after we wash it, we plunge it into boiling water for five seconds. This is called blanching. And it's not long enough to cook the avocado. But just long enough to bring the temperature of the skin and the area under …”
The other half of the tape: Steve Ells's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 4 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 6
Statements about Steve Ells, by other people (1)
Meyer: Chipotle was the first national chain to offer real gastronomy
“Well, Chipotle, I think Steve and Chipotle really deserve an enormous amount of credit for really being the first national chain to break the barrier that fast food could not be It's gastronomic. There's real cooking that takes place in real time”
Every mention by year
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How I Built This 6
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 3 mentions in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Steve's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder and Chief Concept Officer, Counter Service | 3 | 36 | 75% 6/8 | full record on How I Built This → |