Inside Chipotle’s Kitchen: What’s Really Handmade

Inside Chipotle’s Kitchen: What’s Really Handmade

Fresh guacamole and 2-inch shreds of meat

Ordering a burrito at Chipotle can seem like a free-for-all. But the company has a precise method to ensure food stays fresh, costs don't skyrocket and customers are happy.

By Sarah Nassauer in the Wall Street Journal

At Chipotle, if a customer asks for more, employees will generously oblige. They’ll add rice, beans 

or salsa. But they are trained to be stingy with the “critical seven,” expensive foods including steak, carnitas or pork, a braised beef called barbacoa, chicken, cheese, guacamole and sour cream. If pressed for more, they explain that a full scoop of meat is an extra charge.

This is part of Chipotle’s formula to balance made-by-hand and automation, giving diners quick meals they feel are lovingly prepared. For a customized burrito with fresh guacamole, people have been willing to pay more than they would for traditional fast-food, even though it still arrives wrapped in foil.

At Chipotle, guacamole is made from scratch in each of its almost 1,800 outlets. Tortillas are fried into chips, then doused in fresh-squeezed lime and sprinkled liberally with salt. Onions, cilantro, lettuce and jalapeños are chopped into small pieces. Cheese is shredded.

Other foods come from a central kitchen to save money and guarantee a consistent product. Plastic bags of slow-cooked beef and pork are heated in a water bath and shredded by hand.

Navigating the fine line between serving fresh food and keeping prices low has been a constant challenge for the company over its 22 years, says Steve Ells , founder and chief executive of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., in an interview at the company’s Manhattan office. Chipotle’s food costs hit about 35% of revenue last year, a level more in line with fine dining, not fast food. Some investors worry that percentage could rise as food costs go up for ingredients like meat. Yet Chipotle sales have increased each year for over two decades—the past seven years of which people aren’t dining out more. Other restaurant companies have watched this feat with envious eyes.

McDonald’s Corp. has suffered a two-year sales slump, in part because rivals like Chipotle are picking off younger customers who want fresher food. The same dynamic is reverberating throughout the food industry at large restaurant chains and big packaged food companies. Cereal, soup and soda sales are flat or falling, as sales of organic food and brands perceived as more natural win more shoppers.

In the restaurant world many new chains are touted as “the Chipotle of…” pizza, Asian rice bowls, barbecue or organic food. They aim for the Chipotle model: serve fresh food, often with an ethical promise about how it was grown or sourced. Some move customers through a service line to choose ingredients. The prices are low, but often close to double what McDonald’s customers pay.

Chipotle often makes subtle recipe shifts to find the right balance between taste and cost. For years, it used pre-chopped tomatoes shipped in plastic bags to make mild salsa. A central kitchen in Chicago chopped firm, not-yet-ripe tomatoes (that makes them easy to ship) in machines, and then washed them in water before packaging. Late last year, the restaurants began chopping tomatoes in top-loading dicing machines each morning because they taste better chopped on-site.

 “Is it as good as cutting with a knife on a cutting board? No,” says Mr. Ells. But chopping tomatoes by hand would raise labor costs, he says.

Each new Chipotle employee gets a pocket-size guide that outlines “the art of portioning” as well as other guidelines. It includes actual-size photographs of properly chopped 1-inch-by-1½-inch salad lettuce, one-eighth-inch-to-one- quarter-inch flakes of cilantro, and 2-inch-long shreds of slow cooked beef and pork. Customers should be served a 4-ounce scoop of meat and rice, 2 ounces of green or red salsa, a 1-ounce pinch of cheese or lettuce, says the guide.

The chain is still larger than other restaurants trying to out-Chipotle, Chipotle. Sweetgreen Inc., a make-your-own salad chain with 31 restaurants serves sustainably sourced, local, seasonal ingredients cooked from scratch. Unlike Chipotle, the Washington, D.C.,-based company changes the menu in every city to focus on seasonal, local food—an operational challenge, says Nicolas Jammet, co-chief executive.

Sweetgreen executives have found customers want proof their food is made from scratch on site. In its first restaurants, some cooking happened in kitchens behind the scenes. “A lot of customers were coming in and not really realizing everything was made in the store,” says Mr. Jammet. Sweetgreen’s new restaurants have entirely open kitchens so customers can see every step of the cooking process, “We aren’t hiding anything,” he says.

Traditional fast-food chains are rushing to brag about serving less-processed food. McDonald’s is experimenting with adding customization to its menu. Diners will be able to tap on a screen to customize burger toppings in about 2,000 of its more than 14,000 restaurants by next year. And executives late last year told investors the company is considering reducing artificial ingredients in its recipes.

Sonic Corp. touts serving real ice cream, not soft-serve. McDonald’s website is promoting breakfast sandwiches with the slogan, “starts with a fresh cracked egg.” In a new blue cheese and bacon sandwich from Wendy’s “we start out every day cooking the bacon,” which is more expensive and time consuming than buying precooked bacon and heating it, says Brandon Solano, chief marketing officer for Wendy’s Co. Wendy’s never freezes beef for burgers and everyday chops fresh romaine and iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes for salad, he says.

The Chipotle in East Rutherford, N.J., allowed me to work at this location for two days earlier this month. On a recent Monday, Jesus Santos, a 24-year-old who runs the restaurant, scolded “you’re cutting too wide,” as this reporter attempted to chop red onions into small cubes. Onions need to be diced consistently, says Mr. Santos, so customers don’t get one bite of salsa without onion flavor and another with an overpowering chunk. Here, 10 employees spend four hours each morning chopping and prepping food before doors open at 11 a.m.

For years they chopped onions by hand. Then to save time and money, the company tested chopping them with a food processor and a top-loading dicing machine. Both left macerated, watery onions that overpowered salsa or guacamole. So employees keep chopping, and with precision.

Chipotle employees are given explicit instructions about how to prepare, cook and serve a simple menu of 21 potential ingredients that are largely the same as they were two decades ago. But quality control is difficult, and often rests in the hands of young employees.