Steve Ells Quotes

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Steve Ells

Profession : Businessman

Birth : September 12, 1966

I started Chipotle with the idea to create an experience that's fast - and not fast food.

Steve Ells

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

Steve Ells

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.

Steve Ells

You cannot take shortcuts. We've shown that we can spend more on ingredients, not less, and charge a fair price.

Steve Ells

When I started Chipotle, I didn't know the fast-food rules. People told us the food was too expensive and the menu was too limited. Neither turned out to be true.

Steve Ells

One of the pivotal moments for me was realizing that our 'food with integrity' approach at Chipotle was satisfying my passion. That's about bringing the best quality, sustainably-raised ingredients to everyone: chicken without antibiotics; beef without hormones. These ingredients were only available in high-end restaurants, not mainstream places.

Steve Ells

My undergraduate degree was in art history! Raising money for Chipotle was really my MBA. The money for my first restaurant came from my dad, the second from mostly cash flow. The third was an SBA loan. After my dad invested $1.5 million to open a few more, he suggested I raise the money myself for the experience.

Steve Ells

Chipotle was wildly successful, and I thought, 'Well, let me open one more.'

Steve Ells

We want to make the old fast food model irrelevant. We want to make great ingredients and classic cooking techniques accessible to everybody.

Steve Ells

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.

Steve Ells

Having never taken a business class, the economics of restaurants scared me. I opened Chipotle with the idea that I could step away from it and use it to support my full-scale restaurant.

Steve Ells

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.

Steve Ells

So much of today's food is based on the exploitation of animals and the environment. Yes, it's cheap, but at what cost?

Steve Ells

The traditional fast food model is built on buying the cheapest ingredients - and that usually means poor-quality, heavily processed foods. But you can use quality ingredients, cook food using classic cooking techniques, and still serve something that's fast and inexpensive.

Steve Ells

The first Chipotle was intended to be my source of funding for a full-scale restaurant, a means to an end. But it turned out to be more successful than I ever imagined.

Steve Ells

If we really want to change the way Americans eat, we need to make delicious, sustainably-raised food accessible to everyone. Most people are not willing to sacrifice taste or pay a lot more when it comes to eating better. That's why the Chipotle model is so important.

Steve Ells

The best Chipotle restaurant managers get the title 'restaurateur' and a $10,000 bonus for each person they hire who starts as crew and goes on to become a manager.

Steve Ells

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.

Steve Ells

After a two-year stint at Stars, I wanted to start my own full-service restaurant, but I didn't have the funds to do so, so I got a modest loan from my parents and opened Chipotle with the goal of having it fund that restaurant.

Steve Ells

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

Steve Ells