Chipotle has opened its 1,000th restaurant in Flower Mound, Texas, at 4 years and nearly four months after the opening of restaurant No. 500.
The latest company milestone serves as a testament to the unique vision of Chipotle's founder Steve Ells and his desire to serve "Food with Integrity."
Ells' vision Chipotle has evolved from what he originally planned, and the chain's impact has become greater than he thought possible in the beginning.
"We are changing the way people think about and eat fast food," Ells said. "Today, we have 1,000 restaurants and are serving some 750,000 people a day. Between our commitment to making great tasting food with ingredients from more sustainable sources, and a culture that rewards and empowers our people, Chipotle now has much more of an impact on how people eat than I ever would have had if I stuck to my initial plan."
Ells' original plan for Chipotle called for only one restaurant, but the success of the first Chipotle gave rise to a new plan and has given Ells a bigger platform to influence how people eat.
"Our focus on making great-tasting food with more sustainably raised ingredients available and affordable for everyone is one of the keys to our success," Ells said. "These better quality ingredients allow us to make better-tasting food, and that's what keeps our customers coming back. While some of our customers don't know the depths of our commitment to finding such great ingredients, the discipline to focus on making food this way has contributed significantly to our reaching the 1,000 restaurant milestone."
Through its commitment, Chipotle serves more naturally raised meat than any other national restaurant company, including all of its pork, 85 percent of its beef, and about 80 percent of its chicken. Additionally, 40 percent of all of its beans are organically grown, and the company plans to use at least 50 percent of at least one produce item from local farms for all of its restaurants (some 5 million pounds of locally grown produce in all).
Chipotle also has a unique internal "people" or corporate culture.
Today, more than 90 percent of Chipotle managers are promoted from within the ranks of its crew. Its Restaurateur Program, which rewards the elite managers who are best at developing crew members into future leaders, now has 168 restaurateurs overseeing about one-third of its restaurants. These also restaurateurs serve as an example to all of the company's 24,000 employees, and helps to develop top performers into powerful leaders within the organization.
