Some analysts have suggested Chipotle is too busy. Not in the consumer sense, but in the number of initiatives unfurling across the brand, from menu to equipment to digital.
But CEO Scott Boatwright counters this is nothing new. Chipotle is merely being more transparent given what’s happened over the past year.
And one note he wants to be clear on: “… we’re not sitting idly by and hoping the world makes a shift,” Boatwright said Tuesday at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. “We will control the narrative. We will win in any macro environment. And we’re proving that this year.”
Chipotle’s Q1 results in April topped Wall Street expectations, with same-store sales climbing 0.5 percent. Transactions rose 0.6 percent and check dipped 0.1 percent. That after the brand reported negative comps of 1.7 percent across fiscal 2025—its first red calendar since 2016, when the e. Coli crisis erased about half of the company’s market cap.
Chipotle CFO Adam Rymer, also speaking at the event, said the chain observed an inflection from Q4 to Q1 as it returned to positive transactions despite grappling with a winter storm that shuttered roughly half of its stores for “several days,” leading to a 100-basis-point impact.
It took a good bit to get to that point. Boatwright said he started to see the “canary in the coal mine” emerge in Q4 2024. Declines began in the middle of the calendar, continued in Q3, and got weaker in Q4, albeit still positive. But that signaled to Boatwright Chipotle was “going to be in for a fight in 2025” as it related to traffic.
That turned out to be accurate. Chipotle opened with negative same-store sales of 0.4 percent, marking the first dip below the line in five years.
To Boatwright’s point, though, Chipotle has had to look inward since. The former COO (he held the title for nearly eight years before elevating in November 2024) redesigned Chipotle’s strategy and launched a new “Recipe for Growth” approach that centered on five pillars. Q1 provided some green shoots Boatwright said are continuing to build. Components will keep scaling throughout 2026 and ladder to multiple years of growth, he said.
During Tuesday’s conversation, Boatwright walked through many of Chipotle’s updates and what it’s taken to reposition the U.S.’ eight-highest earning QSR, which in recent years, has leapt Burger King, Domino’s, and Subway in systemwide sales. It closed 2025 with domestic figures of $11.679 billion, ahead of BK’s $11.07 billion, Domino’s $9.953 billion, and Subway’s $9.2 billion.
Chipotle, despite challenged transaction trends, expanded by a net of 294 restaurants to reach 3,938. Outside of Starbucks (10,047), Chipotle boasts the largest company-run footprint of any restaurant concept in America (there are no U.S. franchises). Next is Panda Express at 2,423 corporate units.
What “busy” looks like at Chipotle
One of those elements at work for the company is Boatwright’s efforts to bolster leadership. Namely, with three hires in COO Jason Kidd, who came over last May from Taco Bell, and the April appointments of Fernando Machado as chief brand officer (he spent seven years as CMO of Burger King, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and Tim Hortons parent Restaurant Brands International), and Arlie Sisson as chief digital officer. Sisson was SVP, global head of digital, commercial services at Hyatt Hotels.
Boatwright said Chipotle needed to shore up foundational levers. No. 1 was having a sustainable, resilient supply chain for a brand that’s backend can be fragile due to how bespoke it is compared to peers. That sourcing element is a unique trait of who Chipotle is, from ingredients to animal husbandry practices, but also one that imparts pressure on the system.
Next was Chipotle’s brand voice.
Boatwright felt it was time to evolve how Chipotle showed up in conversations. It’s For Real campaign was deployed eight years ago and served the brand well coming out of prior setbacks. Yet it’s run a bit dry, Boatwright said.
“We need to evolve the brand voice to really communicate to the consumer why not just how Chipotle is unique and different, but what that means for the consumer,” he said.
Additionally, with digital, Chipotle fell behind. Boatwright said the brand had a strong platform for “many, many years”—one you’d consider best in class when it hit the market (also eight years ago).
Competition, however, got better. Boatwright doesn’t feel Chipotle did the same.
So, he said, the company set out to rebuild its digital strategy and ecosystem with Sisson at the controls.
Machado, named a Top 3 Most Influential GMO by Forbes, officially began June 1. He was cooking chicken in the back of a Chipotle last week..
“What is changing,” Boatwright said of the larger picture, “is how we think about the world ahead. How we think about navigating consumer uncertainty. How we think about navigating a forever evolving macro environment. Instead of just relying on a tried-and-true strategy that you can put in place for two to three years, I think you have to be very nimble as an organization today to meet the consumer where they are and to change as the rapid consumer environment changes as well.”
Alarms usher in changes
Going back to when the warning signs started to flash, Boatwright said, Chipotle wasn’t competing on innovation. The brands who won during one of the more challenged consumer dynamics on record showed up in a meaningful way, he explained.
He suggested you saw 4X to 5X menu innovation across the lexicon. Meanwhile, Chipotle was doing what it’s historically done—rely on a two-LTO strategy that repeats.
The brand in 2026 doubled to a cadence of four. Boatwright said he’s worked in brands that were LTO-heavy and driven (he came over from Arby’s). Most see some increase of new customers when a product arrives and those same guests leave until the next one shows up.
With Chipotle, when it has a consumer who tries, say, Chipotle Honey Chicken for the first time, their lifetime value to the brand increases over somebody who didn’t sample the LTO, meaning launches at Chipotle are generally sticker than you find in QSR.
What was happening, however, was Chipotle asked its LTOs to work too hard for too long. They started to decay in months 4 and 5 and media stopped operating as efficiently. So, restaurant operations were more difficult (executing LTO alongside the regular menu), but without the upside.
Typically, Boatwright said, the perfect lifecycle for an LTO is 90 days. A 30-day awareness period. Thirty days of momentum. And 30 more days of continued momentum, just on the decline.
Chipotle was getting too far along for the squeeze.
“So, I think the four center-of-the-plate innovation—innovation ideas through the year on a quarterly basis—pepper in innovation on sides, dips, and beverage, and you get to a meaningful place for the consumer,” Boatwright said.
He elaborated he meets a parent “almost every day” who says their kid shows up four times a week. “I want to give them compelling reasons and unique flavor differences and unique flavor profiles that are on brand and on trend to get them to come in more often,” Boatwright said.
Chipotle in Q1 carried price of about 0.9 percent, well under the industry’s rate of nearly 4 percent, Rymer said. The brand expects to layer on “small step-ups” throughout the year as it adopts a slow-and-measured approach. Chipotle could go faster.
Rymer said it won’t in favor of investing in the brand’s value perception.
That’s creating some margin dislocation, he admitted, “but we believe it’s the right thing to do.”
The in-store evolution
And as Chipotle prefers a long-term view, it’s investing labor into stores to execute better. An example is the ongoing rollout of a high-efficiency equipment package Rymer said created “several hours” of efficiency the brand could take out of restaurants. Instead, though, it’s elected to leave them in and make further investments around hospitality to ensure employees are showing up during peak lunch and dinner times to “wow our guests and, again, create that environment,” he said.
This package for Chipotle features a dual-sided plancha, three-pan rice cooker, and high-capacity fryer. As of Q1, it was in more than 600 restaurants, up from 250, period-over-period. The pace gained to 45 installs per week toward a wider goal of 2,000 units by the end of 2026 and systemwide by late 2027 or early 2028. It can be installed overnight and doesn’t require a unit to close. Boatwright noted it’s plug-and-play and takes teams about a month to get up to speed.
Sales thus far are 2–4 percent higher and there’s higher throughput, taste of food, and OSAT scores.
The package enables stores to get prep tasks done more efficiently in the morning. Crew can take meal breaks and cash in on the free meal they get for working a shift. And then, they’re back on the line before crowds show up and staff is fully deployed.
It costs roughly $100,000 to retrofit an existing restaurant.
But beyond the two- or three-month sales inflection period Chipotle has witnessed, it gives the company more power, Rymer said, to think about investing labor back into stores.
Another tangible change is about 25 percent of locations today don’t have an assistant GM, or what Chipotle labels an “apprentice.” AKA, a second salaried manager. The brand has begun to test what happens if it adds one. The answer, thus far, been full-peak coverage considering there are seven days a week and two shifts a day that can be covered by a salaried leader.
Initial results surface better KPIs across the board, Rymer said, as well as improved guest experience.
Boatwright said this is an obvious decision, but one you can’t just flip the toggle on. “The reason you can’t do all 1,200 tomorrow morning is you don’t have 1,200 ready, capable apprentices to put in,” he said.
Chipotle must build them over time from hourly managers. As it’s shared before, 90 percent of promotions happen internally (28,000 last year). “We have to groom that talent internally to solve for our challenging restaurant environment,” he said, “which is very unique.”
Boatwright added comp increases flow from labor faster than some might think. In three to six months or so, the brand observes a hike in crew morale and engagement. And, as a result, better guest experience that cascades to loftier top-line sales.
“The better team experience is, the better customer experience will be,” Boatwright said.
Ops as the foundation, where things got off track, the plan back
Boatwright offered candid reflections throughout Tuesday’s conversation. He shared the challenge of going from COO to CEO after nearly eight years building what he believed to be a “world-class operating model, building the best operators in the industry.”
Running a Chipotle, for better and for more difficult, is not like directing your standard QSR. There’s a reason it launched a “fast casual” moniker that would redefine the quality and preparation bar of quick service.
Boatwright explained Chipotle is closer to a mom-and-pop where you’re using pots, pans, knives, cutting boards with fresh bags of onions, boxes of romaine, peppers, etc. “What we do is so unique and special in this industry, which we need to communicate better,” he said.
When Boatwright ascended out of the role, it took him about four months to hire Kidd. Then, it took Kidd six months to get to know the business, progress through training, meet his team, travel the U.S. and talk to operational leaders, and, in plain terms, make the role his own.
That stretch, Boatwright said, saw Chipotle slide backward somewhat in operations, as you might expect of any transition. That didn’t manifest in KPIs right away, but Boatwright did notice a slow deterioration in how the brand delivered experience across the business.
Since, Boatwright noted, things have moved in the right direction. It’s Kidd’s team, voice, and leadership group. “He has the right strategy in place, and he’s evolved the strategy that I put in place, gosh, eight years ago on how we grow this brand and scale being how unique the brand is. Jason’s mandate, full stop, is execution.”
It was one of the hardest hires to make, Boatwright continued, because there’s not another comparable role on the market, returning to the point of Chipotle’s company-run fleet being larger than every QSR not named Starbucks (which is not really a reasonable side-by-side model considering the segment difference).
“Everyone has a franchise system,” Boatwright said (true of the Taco Bell base Kidd came from; 7,124 of 7,784 U.S. total year-end 2025 units being franchised). “So, trying to find Jason is like trying to find a unicorn. … We found the right person. He’s the right leader. It just too him a couple of months to get into the role and get comfortable.”
Along this same topic, Boatwright said, being transparent, Chipotle lost access to consumer feedback for in-restaurant experiences. It used to have a survey program Boatwright said he thought was “pointless.” The company was spending millions on the program where a customer would take the receipt, call a survey, and offer a rating if they had a bad experience and explain why.
All that information came through Chipotle’s digital properties and online customers, which it deemed a good proxy. And the brand felt it had gotten to a point with OSAT where it was best in class, but wasn’t improving materially.
So, Boatwright pulled the program.
“What I failed to realize, and this is a bit of a mea culpa,” he said, “is how it held our restaurant teams accountable to ensure that in-restaurant consumer was having a good experience.”
Chipotle in Q1 said it was testing a mystery shopper program to provide an independent view of operations and validate its efforts. It’s also going to bring back accountability for GMs, Boatwright said, to ensure they’re giving consistently great experiences and are aware of what’s going on in the dining room, the drink station, restrooms, and overall hospitality of their teams.
“We’ve leaned into both of those things this year,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of great progress.”
Chipotle implemented it calls “3 and 3” for every 15 minutes where someone is dedicated to the dining room.
Every 15 minutes, they go out, touch three areas, spend three minutes cleaning those up, and get back to the line for throughput.
A case: When Chipotle added Tractor Beverages, it inadvertently took out the waste container at the drinks station. It now sits over the top of what was once a receptacle.
Customers today get a straw, pull the wrapper off, hold it, and look around for a place to put their trash. Boatwright said they often throw it on the counter.
Chipotle is working to return those receptacles and make sure drink stations are tidy through lunch. In tandem, it launched a hospitality campaign in March at its all-manager conference (6,000 people in Las Vegas) where “Unreasonable Hospitality” author Will Guidara spoke.
“We’re giving assets back to the general manager so they can do recovery in-restaurant real time, which we’ve stripped out under the last marketing initiative,” Boatwright said.
In true Guidara fashion (here’s a look at this in action with First Watch), Chipotle is empowering mangers to try “surprise and delight” moments where they can give chips and guac or burritos, etc., to customers when they see fit. If a guest shows up three times, for instance, a manager can honor that by saying their next meal is on the house. “These are the little touchpoints that seem small that ladder to the overall experience that are critically important for the guest,” Boatwright said. “And we’re getting back to that in short order.”
Getting its voice back
As for the task awaiting Machado, who in the past was responsible for such campaigns as Burger King’s Whopper Detour stunt and The Moldy Whopper, Boatwright said, “For Real” had become wallpaper. Consumers saw ads static to the prior year. Maybe it compelled them to spend at Chipotle. Maybe it didn’t.
“And I knew we needed to be more competitive in this competitive environment we’re operating in,” Boatwright said, “be more nimbler, be more innovative as it relates to menu, menu acceleration, and then lean into the consumer in the most meaningful way.”
“I think we’ve talked forever about being a lifestyle brand where we show up in entertainment,” he added. “We show up in fashion. We show up in sports. Which is all well and good. But we used to lead culture at Chipotle Mexican Grill. Now, I feel like we follow culture ever since kind of the COVID era put us on our back foot. And what Fernando will do pretty quickly, in short order, is get us back to leading culture across the industry yet again.”
Sisson led Hyatt’s digital ecosystem for the past four years, covering 65 million users. Boatwright said she brings over a skillset in broadening and deepening guest engagement across a large platform where you foster experiences unique to each user. That, he said, is where Chipotle lagged.
“I think we ran out of ideas,” he said. “I think our loyalty program was good, not great. We needed to improve or increase the top of the funnel. Get more customers into our loyalty program and then create reasons why they should stay in the program and … deepen the engagement with the consumer in a more meaningful way than we have historically.”
In 2025, loyalty same-store sales at Chipotle meaningfully outpaced non-loyalty. That continued in Q1 as it mixed 32 percent, up 30 percent year-over-year—a reflection of growth in active members and higher frequency among users thanks to reward-focused programs like Summer of Extras and the expansion of Freepotle.
It’s pushed Chipotle to, as Boatwright said, attract more guests. Chipotle has done so by revamping the platform to have more choice, increased gamification, and better value. Examples include a free chips and guacamole welcome offer and three monthly drops.
It’s also tried to capture additional loyalty business inside restaurants. Last quarter, 20 percent of dine-in visits were linked to loyalty, compared to 90 percent of app transactions. In turn, Chipotle rolled out an in-store campaign showcasing menu panels and QR code signage to streamline enrollment. It’s also incentivizing employees to promote rewards inside restaurants.
Frankly, Boatwright said, Chipotle had to get more engaging. It conducted a problem detection study last year to understand the friction points within loyalty and why customers were opting out.
April’s Rewards on Repeat relaunch will offer new experiences, he said, and is a step in the right direction. It’s not a step change, however.
The expectation for Sisson, Boatwright noted, will be to create an app that’s best-in-class and keeps people inside the funnel and engaged, identifies when they’re at risk or lapsed, and brings them back while driving better in-store loyalty percentages. He acknowledged the 20 percent figure was “obviously very week” and something Chipotle must improve to get access to consumer data that’s important and relevant.
Something Chipotle did not do in this update was flip to a tiered system like many competitors. Boatwright said their third-party research showed this works to a point, “but it’s not the Holy Grail.”
“That brands that are telling you it’s a Holy Grail, I think differently,” he said. “I’m not saying they’re wrong. I just think about it differently. I think you’ve got to have engaging onboarding experiences. I think you’ve got to have customer journeys that are meaningful. I think our customer specifically was looking for flexibility on how they spend their rewards points, trying to get to 1,200, 1,300 points [to get an entrée] … which is just too much. So, we offered 50 percent off a burrito or a bowl.”
That’s the kind of perk Chipotle’s customers are seeking. That and early access to LTOs, free drops around Cilantro Lime Sauce, and overall access to the brand, Boatwright said.
Menu observations, growth, and more ahead
Boatwright said Chipotle’s protein cup launch from December was intended, naturally, to capitalize on a movement happening across the space. The brand always had a side available. With this, it just put protein in a cup and labeled it with a price. Incidents soared 36 percent.
Boatwright said the move helped Chipotle lift the needle on transactions and its ability to meet changing dietary needs, from GLP-1 to athletes.
He also highlighted Chipotle’s recent “happier hour” test in Florida, where tacos (normally $3.50) sold for $2.50 from 2 to 5 p.m. It’s still too early to gather go-forward feedback.
Additionally, the brand piloted catering in Chicago and expanded to Boston. Boatwright said he’s been pushing internally to go faster on the channel. “They keep holding me back. And I think they’re probably right to make sure we execute at the right level and make sure it’s a great experience for every customer that tries it,” he said.
Still, Chipotle saw “extraordinary” success in Chicago by deploying a platform to help promote it. And, more importantly, Boatwright said, load balance across stores so it’s not disrupting operations.
Managers, though, want catering and have been asking for it “for years” because it provides a sales bump that helps them reach bonuses. Also, Boatwright said, it’s the most efficient labor utilization and, potentially, the most margin accretive platform Chipotle has.
“Our concern is and always has been, can we operate catering at scale?” he said. “Our competitors are somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of total sales. Today, we’re at 1.5 percent.”
And that’s despite Chipotle’s food traveling well and guests responding favorably. Up next in the test: Phoenix in June. It’s possible, Boatwright said, a full system catering launch could arrive in 2027.
He also expounded on Chipotle’s “Build-Your-Own” option that debuted last August. It’s essentially family-style portions that feed four to six people. It’s under a 1 percent lift today.
Boatwright said awareness remains low and Chipotle might have gotten “too clever and too kitschy” with the name. Guests pop into the app, see the section, and think they’re making a meal versus feeding a group.
Chipotle recently tried calling it “family meals” in two markets (instead of Build-Your-Own Chipotle) and sales climbed 10 percent. “So, we feel comfortable getting a sharper price point, naming it correctly, and really promoting it effectively through social channels and digitally that it will have a meaningful uplift on the business,” he said.
Expansion and competition
Chipotle built 334 new restaurants in North America last year and should develop 350 in 2026. The trajectory for a new store today is about 21 months out, Boatwright said. So, it’s basically fully built for 2027. And the company was marching toward 375–400 per year before Boatwright suggested the brand settle at 350.
He doesn’t feel there’s a rush to get to the long-touted target of 7,000 restaurants. Right now, Chipotle reports 60 percent Year 2 ROI and 80 percent productivity for new locations, as well as about 1 percent cannibalization, which has been consistent for a decade.
“And if we can show sustainable, durable returns, 350 restaurants a year, which we are, I think it’s the right spot for our organization,” Boatwright said.
This growth topic brought up a future avenue for the brand, too. Chipotle has not had a remodel program in 33 years. Understandably, some of its assets are becoming dated.
Boatwright said he’s asked the team to go back and look at the different levels of investment on a remodel and project what the returns will be.
There’s a test this summer with 20 stores across three DMAs where Chipotle will try varying levels and see what happens.
Provided those perform well, whichever one wins out will inform a remodel strategy going forward. Boatwright estimated there are 1,000–1,500 Chipotles that could use a facelift.
When he joined in 2017, a good swath of assets were distressed. Broken tiles. Busted light lenses, Torn booths. “I mean, you name it, the gamut of problems,” he said.
Chipotle stores were dark red inside. There were incandescent lamps providing low light.
One of the first things he did was clean up units. He recalls asking the board for $50 million to (the brand was 1,900 restaurants deep at the time) address deferred maintenance.
Chipotle painted walls white. Re-lamped every store. And mostly just brightened up locations to create a more approachable brand. That worked well for 10 years, Boatwright said, and Chipotle has gotten to a point where some of those restaurants, no matter how much it reinvests in maintenance capital, just need to be updated.
Chipotle’s “Habanero” prototype is a more modern imagining of the brand and stands as a stark contrast to the legacy units that are old tent and trip with pipe bollards seats and mushroom tops.
The three investment levels Chipotle will test are $200,000, $400,000, and $600,000 from interior and exterior design, and kitchen. “I’m hopeful that the test will work because I’d like to pull together. Remodel strategy to address those older assets,” Boatwright said.
Boatwright was also asked about ever-growing competition. He brought up CAVA. He said Chipotle delved into the Mediterranean chain’s aggressive growth in New York and Florida to understand the intrusion.
While the brand saw some marginal sales pressure within the first six months, he said, it recovered “very quickly.”
“And what ended up happening in those CAVA restaurants [is they] are bringing more consumers to that trade area,” Boatwright said. “And they’re making a choice about CAVA and Chipotle. And what we’re seeing is they’re choosing Chipotle.”
He feels there are two reasons why.
“I think our food is better,” Boatwright said. “I’ll put our food up against anybody in the world. But I think we’re much faster and we deliver a quicker experience, which is probably one of the Achilles heels of that brand. I think they’re doing fantastic work. Don’t misunderstand my comments. I think it’s a great brand. I think they’re really doing some really, really cool things. But I just think, when I think about competition, I will build almost the same number of restaurants they have in total just this year.”
“And so, you think about the size and scale and the growth trajectory of Chipotle,” he continued, “I really don’t see competition standing in the way.”
Circling back to the consumer narrative Boatwright addressed, he said the industry is suffering from a declining guest backdrop of people who think food out of home has gotten too expensive while their pocketbooks are being pressured. They’re choosing different avenues to feed their families or themselves.
“And so, I think things need to correct themselves,” he said. “You’re starting to see food at home starting to increase in inflation and starting to see restaurant inflation normalize. And I think that’s a really important inflection point for the industry at large. We will, again, we will win and get back to mid-single-digit growth. But you have a little bit of tailwind from the consumer and it’s game on.”
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