The Early Beginnings

In 1993, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells had an idea to open a fancy fine dining restaurant. At that time he did not have the money to do so. Ells had the brilliant idea to open a small burrito shop. He believed it was a low risk way to fund his future fine dining restaurant. He asked his father for a loan of 80,000 dollars. His father gave him the money. At the age of 28, Ells opened his burrito shop in Colorado. After a few months of being open, Ells was so profitable he was able to repay his father within the first few months of being open.

Chipotle becoming a top food chain

The same year Chipotle opened in 1996, they already had three locations. Ells kept expanding Chipotle with more locations. In 1998, McDonald’s invested 360 million dollars into Chipotle. By 2001, McDonald’s became a main share holder of the company. In 2006, Chipotle became a public company. However, at this time McDonald’s investment had turned into 1.5 billion dollars. After almost a decade in 2015, Chipotle shares went to $758! Unfortunately that same year, Chipotle had Ecoil problems and it hurt the company a lot. Luckily, they bounced back and they have over 2,300 locations. Chipotle is currently one of the top food chains in America. They had over 1.6 billion in sales this year.

Credits

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/11/29/how-steve-ells-built-chipotle-mexican-grill-into-a-burrito-empire.html