Steve Ells

“From the very beginning. I didn't know what the fast-food rules were.”

“I remember looking to McDonald's, and, my God, they have 13,000 restaurants in the United States. Well, we have almost a couple thousand Chipotles. What if Pizzeria Locale is a few thousand, and Shod. All of a sudden, we're bigger than McDonald's in the U.S. I mean, that's not an unreasonable way to think about this.”

“Our economic model allows us to invest a disproportionate amount in our food costs. We have a very efficient system: customers go through a single line, the people who serve you are the ones who make the food, and our menu board is not cluttered.”

“Despite offering dollar menus and frequent discounts, many of these chains also scored poorly in terms of value.”

“We want to show all of our customers that the industry standards that we had been employing before - which are considered great standards - were not good enough.”

“When our employees walk in in the morning, they see food. They have to cook. At the restaurants, we chop cilantro, onions, and limes two or three times a day. We make guacamole from fresh avocados.”

“I thought we were going to get customers excited by telling them there were no antibiotics in our meat or no growth hormones used to raise the animals or no RBGH in our cheese or sour cream. Well, that's not a very appetizing message.”

“When I graduated from cooking school, I went to work at Stars, which was one of my favorite restaurants in the country at the time, and that's where I really learned to cook and to taste food in a discerning way.”

“I remember feeling a little guilty every time I opened a Chipotle. I felt guilty because I wasn't following my true passion. But that eventually went away. And I realized that this is my calling.”

“We have a terrific team, and our managers are terrific managers, but we have made it too complicated for them and too complicated in a way that they just can't do an excellent job in many cases when it comes to the customer experience.”

“Looking inward and understanding where you made mistakes in the past helps you set up for change.”

“We're not best in the world at burritos and tacos. What we're best in the world at is building a people culture, sourcing really great ingredients, cooking according to classic cooking techniques, understanding the corresponding economic model and how to tweak that and drive that and provide this really great, new fast food experience.”

“When I told my friends and family that I was leaving Stars to open a burrito shop in Denver, they thought I was crazy, but not long after the success of the first Chipotle, I knew I had to open just one more, so I opened a second one on Colorado Boulevard, which turned out to be even busier than the first.”

“If I had taken money from, say, venture capital, they would have wanted a certain return in a certain time period. McDonald's, on the other hand, seemed very interested in my passion about creating this brand. I trusted them, and they did not really interfere with the brand.”

“My father is very supportive of anything that his kids want to do.”

“Chipotle was going to incorporate all the things I had learned at the Culinary Institute and Stars and really elevate typical fast food.”

“It is impossible to insure that there is a zero percent chance of any kind of foodborne illness anytime anyone eats anywhere.”

“Being in compliance with industry standards is less than 5 percent of what companies need to do to make food safe. Company after company finds that out after they have events.”

“The bottom line - customers want delicious food served quickly in an interactive format, and they are increasingly unwilling to compromise.”

“The earliest recollection I have of being in the kitchen and cooking was in the third grade, and we lived in Germany. And I remember cooking scrambled eggs.”