Quotes from Steve Ells

Being in compliance with industry standards is less than 5 percent of what companies need to do to make food safe. Company after company finds that out after they have events.

We want to show all of our customers that the industry standards that we had been employing before - which are considered great standards - were not good enough.

I use a lot of citrus for seasoning. There's lemon or lime juice in just about everything, and that balances with salt very nicely. Things like toasted cumin seeds for the beans. The use of fresh herbs like oregano and cilantro.

When I started on the very first day with just one restaurant, we used to pick oregano off the stems and chop them. We still do that.

I'm very much looking forward to relentlessly focusing on ensuring an excellent guest experience, removing unnecessary complexity from our operations, championing innovation, and pursuing our mission of making better food accessible to more people.

The bottom line - customers want delicious food served quickly in an interactive format, and they are increasingly unwilling to compromise.

When our employees walk in in the morning, they see food. They have to cook. At the restaurants, we chop cilantro, onions, and limes two or three times a day. We make guacamole from fresh avocados.

I remember feeling a little guilty every time I opened a Chipotle. I felt guilty because I wasn't following my true passion. But that eventually went away. And I realized that this is my calling.

Having never taken a business class, the economics of restaurants scared me. I opened Chipotle with the idea that I could step away from it and use it to support my full-scale restaurant.

After a two-year stint at Stars, I wanted to start my own full-service restaurant, but I didn't have the funds to do so, so I got a modest loan from my parents and opened Chipotle with the goal of having it fund that restaurant.

When I told my friends and family that I was leaving Stars to open a burrito shop in Denver, they thought I was crazy, but not long after the success of the first Chipotle, I knew I had to open just one more, so I opened a second one on Colorado Boulevard, which turned out to be even busier than the first.

I am incredibly proud of Chipotle and our people - and grateful to our loyal customers - and while we are continuing to make progress, it is clear that we need to move faster to make improvements.

If I had taken money from, say, venture capital, they would have wanted a certain return in a certain time period. McDonald's, on the other hand, seemed very interested in my passion about creating this brand. I trusted them, and they did not really interfere with the brand.

Certainly, in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, I studied art history and had a great time, but I didn't have any sort of career aspirations.

Just because food is served fast doesn't mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.