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In 1993, Culinary Institute of America graduate Steve Ells, a former line cook under Jeremiah Tower at Stars in San Francisco, borrowed $85,000 from his father to open a burrito shop in a former Dolly Madison ice cream store near the University of Denver. It was meant to fund a fine dining restaurant: he needed 107 burritos a day to break even and was selling more than a thousand within a month. Modeled on Mission District taquerias, the line ran on fine dining prep, with onions and jalapeños chopped by hand, meats marinated overnight and no frozen food. McDonald’s made a minority investment in 1998 and was the largest investor by 2001, pushing drive-thrus and breakfast that Ells refused, while Chipotle grew from 16 locations to more than 500. McDonald’s turned $360 million into $1.5 billion when it divested in 2006, the year Chipotle’s stock doubled on its first trading day.

After a 1999 article sent Ells to visit factory farms, Chipotle began sourcing open-range pork, and “Food With Integrity” meant no freezers, microwaves or can openers, meat without antibiotics or added hormones, and no GMO ingredients by 2015. That year Chipotle pulled pork from a third of its restaurants after a supplier failed an animal welfare audit. Then came an E. coli outbreak hitting Washington and Oregon, a norovirus incident that sickened more than 140 Boston College students and a salmonella outbreak tied to tomatoes in Minnesota. Every store closed for a day of food safety training in early 2016, and a 2017 norovirus outbreak in Sterling, Virginia was traced to a manager letting a sick employee work. Ells stepped down as CEO in late 2017, former Taco Bell CEO Brian Niccol took over in 2018 and moved headquarters to Newport Beach, California, and Ells left the board in March 2020.

• Ells’ father later invested another $1.5 million, and an outside board of directors added $1.8 million.
• Spinoffs Soul Daddy, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen, Tasty Made and Pizzeria Locale all failed or were shut down.
• Chipotle acknowledged that fresh, non-frozen produce made it more susceptible to pathogens, and began blanching onions and pre-treating some ingredients.
• Under Niccol, Chipotlane pickup lanes fed by a second make line for app orders were built by the hundreds.
• Expansion reached Saudi Arabia, Mexico and South Korea, where opening-day waits hit three hours, while robots called Autocado and Chippy were tested.