Chipotle

“Chipotle stores sell close to 200,000 of them every single hour.”

“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.”

“I was lucky to have a father who could invest 85,000 dollars in my first restaurant because I couldn't have raised that money myself.”

“This was the first site we saw near the university of Denver campus. It was 850 square feet. It was in terrible condition. It needed a lot of work. I think the rent was 800 dollars a month or something like this.”

“Every time you have a dinner party, people are in the kitchen. People want to be in the kitchen. And so, so Chipotle was designed to invite people in, to bring them close to where the action is.”

“On the eve of the millennium, the company had just a bit more than 20 stores. And today, Chipotle has nearly 2300 locations across the U.S. And in four other countries.”

“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. …”

“Well, the idea for Chipotle is a sort of a combination of food borrowed from stars and sort of a technique and a service format borrowed from the taquerias.”

“Probably when we opened, I can't imagine there was another fast food restaurant Where the crew actually taste the food. I just don't think they did that, right?”

“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 …”

“Yeah, 21, twenty-one billion, I think, was the highest.”

“So I think maybe he put in a little bit more money, but it was mostly cash flow that opened the second restaurant, and that opened about a year and a half later, and it opened up much busier than the first one.”

“Over, over a one month period from basically mid October to mid November 52 people got sick with E. Coli.”

“Oh, I was profitable in the first few months.”

“These burrito shops, these taquerias were small the investment would be low the rent certainly was low, and there were lines out the door, and I thought that, that I could make enough money to fund my full-scale restaurant.”

“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…”

“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.…”

“The menu was developed the day before I opened.”

“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”

“Whatever mistakes we made, whatever collateral damage, if you will, there comes from going too fast would be more than made up for by winning in this category and having All the advantages that come from being that market share leader over time, being the Star…”

“No, I was speaking with Chipotle. Of course I have a non-compete in, in place, but I asked them, I said, well, what do you think if I started a plant-based restaurant, have nothing to do with Chipotle or the fast casual format that Certainly something complete…”

“Best in class brands, Chipotle and Cava and others are in the mid twenties.”

“Maybe it could have been even bigger had I been more balanced.”

“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…”

“By the time I retired, 27 years later, I think we had well over a million customers a day.”