Today’s fast-food consumer wants quality and customization, said Steve Ells, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
“In a nutshell, I think the old fast-food model, the one that requires cheap ingredients because you have to have low menu prices and that you have to have lots of processed food and lots of mechanization to keep things consistent because you don’t have top performers and you have traffic driving based on limited time offers, gimmicks, all kinds of typical marketing things, I think that’s the old model,” Ells said during a May 28 presentation at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York. “I think people are not interested anymore. They know what that tastes like, they know what that does to their body, and they want something more. And I think the system that allows you to buy great quality sustainably raised ingredients, really the kinds of ingredients that were once only available to the elite at high-end markets or fancy restaurants or perhaps upscale farmers’ markets, those kinds of ingredients we think should be available to everybody.”
The Denver-based burrito chain has leveraged its strengths of a made-to-order model in developing its two newer fast-casual concepts of ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen and Pizzeria Locale.