Operational detail at Chipotle
We have a mini-obsession with Chipotle at Quartz, and it’s not because of their food. (You can find better burritos even in New York now.) The company, which went public in 2006, is just really interesting. It has an unusual approach to management and an intense focus on fundamentals.
Chipotle owns all of its stores; it doesn’t franchise. That has its downsides as a business model, but permits strict — like, insanely strict—control over operations. A fun thing about covering Chipotle is its executives like to talk about these operational details on its quarterly earnings call. The details are fascinating and also, presumably by design, give the impression of a company that care about what matters. Operations isn’t sexy, but for Chipotle, it’s pretty much the whole enchilada (or not an enchilada, because the company also famously maintains a simple menu).
Today’s great detail: Chipotle is trying to improve the efficiency of its “make line,” where employees construct the burritos and bowls, by changing the utensil used to apply beans, rice, and so on to pre-ordered meals. (Two-thirds of orders are takeout, but only 7% of customers order in advance; Chipotle wants to close the gap.) “The way we scoop can be improved,” said Steve Ells, founder and co-CEO of the company, on the earnings call.
The idea is to improve throughput, or how many orders Chipotle completes in an hour. At Quartz we call this “burrito velocity.” BV stands at about 120 per hour at its lunchtime peak. That’s two per minute! But the company has repeatedly said it can improve this metric using—and this is a real thing, not satire—“four key pillars of throughput.” One of the pillars is that Chipotle has one person on the line, “the expediter,” who isn’t performing specific tasks like applying hot sauce or ringing you up, but jumping in where necessary to help the operation move more smoothly.
Chipotle is hardly alone in obsessing over operations, but it is unusual for talking so much about granular operational details. What’s so compelling about it, I think, is that Chipotle is a deceptively simple business. Of course it’s incredibly complicated. But, like, if the company weren’t excellent at scooping, then what the hell would it be? (Qdoba, probably.)
If you’re as interested in this as I am, there are many, many more details behind all of the links above. And if you want to write about these things for a living at a place that obsesses over this stuff, come be a reporter at Quartz. We have lots of open jobs writing about companies, including one particularly focused on coverage of business and employee management.
