Advice Line with Steve Ells of Chipotle

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show. who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with. Alright, let's get to it. Joining me today is Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle. Steve, welcome back to the show. Uh, thanks for coming back on. Guy, it's great to be here again.

Good to see you. Uh Steve, you've been on the show twice, uh, the first time way back in 2017, when you told us, of course, the origin story of Chipotle, how you were working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco, and basically you had this idea. To sell burritos in order to save the money so you could start your own fine dining restaurant. which was your dream, but of course that's not what happened, that Burrito Place turned into Chipotle. It was started in Denver and today, of course, it is a massive global restaurant brand uh at a publicly traded company.

Uh and as always, is anyone listening uh who hasn't heard that original High Beltis episode about launching Chipotle, it's really fascinating. Go go check it out. Uh we'll put a link to it in the podcast description. Steve. Also came back on the show in 2023 to talk about a new concept uh that you were about to launch in New York City. It's called kernel. And Steve, just to summarize, uh basically the idea behind it was an entirely plant based menu.

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