Name: Chipotle's CEO on How He Plans to Double the Business. Again.
Uploaded: 2023-07-25T17:29:00Z
Duration: 5 min 30 s
Description: Brian Niccol on developing new customer favorites, taking menu tips from TikTok, and the outlook for growing the business.

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Brian Niccol on developing new customer favorites, taking menu tips from TikTok, and the outlook for growing the business.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20230725/dec91556-4dbe-49e6-85d9-ed0e8233ac02/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Chipotle's CEO on How He Plans to Double the Business. Again.

The business seems to be going from strength to strength here, , beyond the pandemic. What's driving growth for you recently?

Most recently, I would say we've just gotten back to executing the basics of the Chipotle operation. So in the last, call it 24 months, between COVID and some of the labor shortages, we really had to create workarounds and now it's great to be in a position where our restaurants are, for the most part, fully staffed. We've had some stability in the restaurants, so a lot less turnover and we've been able to get back to the basics of executing, what I would call great culinary, great prep, great deployment, great speed. And I would say of late, that's been the biggest driver. And then we've had some really nice, I'd say menu innovations to layer on top of that strong foundation around the fajita quesadilla and then most recently, the Chicken al Pastor.

How do you come up with a new idea on a business that big. Someone in a meeting somewhere pitches an idea or you've got test kitchens where you try 'em out and how do you decide which ones to run with?

Yeah, so we call it our Cultivate Center, which is our test kitchen. It's also a place where we test equipment, test culinary and then obviously, we're building a lot of restaurants, so we're also testing new designs from new chairs to new artwork to new flow. You've probably heard us talk about, if you've listened to any of our earnings calls, a stage gate process where there's always a lot of ideas for food and our guys are always looking for what are new trends, what are new flavors that people would like to experience? And we kinda have this belief that we should be leading culture in food, we should be relevant in food culture. Those are the two things we wanna be doing. So we try to find things, like Chicken al Pastor to doing simple things like the fajita quesadilla. And the guys concept test a lot of different ideas and there's always a few that seem to rise to the top. And then we take it through our stage gate process where we make sure we can actually cook it across 3,200 restaurants, can we supply it across 3,200 restaurants? And then we go and do it in a test to find out what type of demand there is and what are the implications on the rest of the business. And then once we understand that, then we take it to market. And that's why most recently Chicken al Pastor has been in the marketplace

I don't wanna sound unsophisticated, but Chicken al Pastor., it's different in the seasoning, the preparation? What's making Chicken al Pastor a hit?

Yeah, primarily seasoning. Usually Pastor you'll find on pork traditionally, so it's kind of got like a sweet and spicy note to it versus our adobo chicken has definitely got a little bit more of like that slow heat. This is the sweet and spicy and primarily, the sweetness comes from pineapple. And then the spicy comes from a variety of peppers that we use. So that's al Pastor store versus something that's like in culture would be the fajita quesadilla. This TikTok influencer, Keith Lee, he was talking about how he was putting fajita veggies in his steak quesadilla and then getting a side of sour cream on a honey vinegarette and it was just a home run. When we saw that happening, we're like, well, let's be a part of kind of that TikTok influencer culture. It was obvious we already had the fajita vegetables on the menu. We already had the sour cream on it, so we just made it more readily available through our online app and that proved to be pretty powerful.

Interesting. I was just testing you on the al Pastor, by the way. You passed with flying colors. I knew all that stuff. What's the latest thinking on how big this business can become? Tell me about your long-term ambition.

Yeah, sure. So we've talked about getting to three million average unit volumes. The good news is we're closing in on that and we're now starting to set our sights on three and a half, four million average unit volumes out of our existing restaurants. You've seen the number that we're targeting 7,000 restaurants in the United States and Canada. We're closing in on about 30. We'll probably finish this year just shy of 3,500 restaurants. So we're getting halfway there. So if you start to do the math on this, you can see a quick path to how you can easily double this business again in a big way, both in restaurant count and revenue. So we're really optimistic about that. And then we're just getting started, frankly with some international expansion. We're in the early days in Western Europe but we're continuing to see really good top line growth in the few restaurants that we have in London and Paris. So I'm optimistic about that. So if you fast forward, if you roll the ball down the field on this I really hope we've got 7,000 restaurants doing well over $3 million average unit volumes. And hopefully people are talking about Chipotle everywhere, a lot of other places outside the United States.

Chipotle's CEO on How He Plans to Double the Business. Again.

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