Grilling Chipotle's CEO

Chipotle Mexican Grill's corporate office isn't the norm among NYSE companies. Employees wear jeans, and their dogs freely roam the warehouse-looking building.

 

There's no security guard here — unless you count the shiny black Lab with a blue bandana dangling from his thick neck. The phlegmatic pooch is more likely to lick you to death than fasten his fangs to your ankle.

 

 

Inside you won't find teak ceilings, marble tiles or executive washrooms. Employees work in simple cubicles. But that's not to say the Chipotle headquarters — located on Wazee Street in downtown Denver — is boring. (Check out a slideshow of Chipotle's headqaurters)

 

With life-size cardboard cutouts of Steve Ells and signs saying, "It's about the people, dammit," everywhere, one might conclude Chipotle has the coolest office digs among Wall Street companies. To talk about this fun work environment and other issues, Fast Casual caught up with Ells, Chipotle's founder and chief executive.

 

FC:This is a pretty humble office for a publicly traded company.

 

Ells:(He laughs.) What does one look like?

 

FC:I suppose one should be tidy and pristine looking with great big offices. Your headquarters looks very much like your restaurants. Talk a little bit about the inside-of-the-store look and how that contributes to the workplace culture.

 

Ells:I think the look speaks to the food, and how we cook the food and serve the food. You don't often see a relationship between the food and the design of a quick-service restaurant. But think for a moment what we serve – raw ingredients: steak, chicken, beans, rice, avocados. What makes this food special is we prepare them according to classic cooking methods and serve them and season them.

 

The food is really an elevation of these simple things. And I think that's true to the look of the restaurant as well. It's plywood and stainless steel and barn metal and concrete and pipes and conduits. The way we designed these stores is they have a sympathetic relationship to the food and the look of the place.

 

FC:A lot has been made of your initial public offering this year. From an anecdotal standpoint, what does it mean to be the founder of this chain?

 

Ells: It's meant a lot of different things over the years. Certainly, opening the first restaurant, we tried to show that just because it was fast, it didn't need to be a fast-food experience. And that was wildly popular. Along the way, we started 'food with integrity,' (the company's slogan) which is taking fresh to the next level. Fresh is not enough anymore.

 

Now, we have to know how the food was raised. How the animals were treated. How the produce is grown. Whether or not the animals had antibiotics or growth hormones or whether pesticides were used on the produce. Now we have this opportunity to introduce to the masses great-quality ingredients that were sustainably raised. It's not too long ago these ingredients were only available in high-end restaurants and gourmet markets. Today, we think the demand is out there. So, what started out as a very simple concept has expanded into this great opportunity to change the way Americans eat food.

 

FC:Since going public, what are some things that have changed?

 

Ells:(He scratches his head, crosses his legs and gives a facetious grin.) Gosh, nothing has really changed.

 

FC:What about since McDonald's divested its shares?

 

Ells:Since before McDonald's invested money in Chipotle, we agreed to run Chipotle autonomously, and that McDonald's relationship allowed us to tap into resources as we see fit. McDonald's did not run Chipotle. So that's why there was no change when McDonald's began investing and selling.

 

FC:Are there any plans to sell franchises?

 

Ells:Not in the near term. In the long- term, it is certainly something we can consider. Perhaps there is a scenario we franchise to our best store managers who are willing to go into smaller towns where it doesn't make sense to set up corporate structure. But there's really nothing in the near term.

 

FC:You're a celebrity of sorts in this business. Have you ever given any thought to taking on a political role with the National Restaurant Association or another pro-industry group?

 

Ells:I haven't considered it. I think mostly about our business and how to make burritos and tacos better.