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Chipotle - A Fast-Casual Restaurant

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The Chipotle restaurant chain has a over 1,600 locations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe; and it’s still growing. But it didn't start off that way. A recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Steve Ells had a dream to open his own fine dining restaurant. With an $85,000 loan from his father, Steve opened the first Chipotle in Denver, Colorado in 1993, serving tacos and burritos. He had set a goal to sell at least a minimum of 100 burritos to make a profit. He wanted to make enough money to pay his father back and open his restaurant. Within the first month, Chipotle sold over 1,000 burritos a day. The opening of his first Chipotle did really well. The second store opened in 1995 using the money that the first Chipotle made and did a lot better that the first. To make the restaurant chain bigger, Steve Ells’ father invested $1.5 million into his son’s business. Afterwards, the board of directors were created including a business plan, raising an additional $1.8 million for the company. In 1998, the first restaurant outside of Colorado opened in Kansas City, Missouri. And from there, Chipotle was born and Steve Ells became the CEO of Chipotle. Within the next five years, 16 other Chipotle locations were opened. In 1998, the world’s biggest fast food chain restaurant, McDonalds, started investing in Chipotle. Over the next seven years, McDonalds had invested $350,000,000 into Chipotle, but parted ways in 2006 and made double than what they invested in the company. Chipotle restaurants are company-owned, rather than franchise-owned. And every time that Steve Ells thinks about opening his fine dining restaurant, he ends up opening three new Chipotles every week or so. Each Chipotle restaurant is unique because of its team and the store manager. Each store manager is to promote within and there are times where you might receive a surprise visit from the management team. The Management team is made up of

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