11 Fun Facts About Chipotle You Probably Didn't Know

If you've eaten at Chipotle, you probably already know just how delicious (and massive) the chain's burritos are. We don't need to tell you to splurge on the guac, but yes – splurge on the guac. If you're a true fan, you even know the restaurant's trick to storing guac so that it doesn't brown. But there are still a few secrets wrapped up in that shiny silver foil, and we're here to spill the beans (pinto or black, your choice).

Chipotle has tasty options that work for lunch or dinner, including quesadillas, salads, and bowls, and hefty burritos. The basic philosophy of the restaurant is to prioritize natural ingredients and sustainable practices to create delicious food that is ready quickly. Even though Chipotle competes with fast food giants like McDonald's and Subway for customers looking for a convenient place to stop, the approach is very different. Chipotle uses fresh, natural ingredients with an emphasis on sustainable agriculture and environmentally-friendly policies.

But even the most diehard fan of this casual Mexican food chain may be surprised at its origins, offerings, and little-known secrets. From a formally-trained chef-turned-restauranteur to a specialized DJ to create playlists, the Chipotle vibe goes well beyond just a humble burrito. Here are some surprising fun facts about this pioneer of the fast casual restaurant industry.

The San Francisco culinary scene is legendary, so it's probably not surprising that street fare like burritos in this California city have been replicated at restaurants across the country. Chipotle, which was founded in Denver, Colorado, was just one of those establishments. Founder Steve Ells loved the food that he enjoyed in San Fran's mission district. He was living in the city and working as a sous chef at Stars restaurant. When he later relocated to Denver, it made sense to him to bring this style of food to Colorado.

Chipotle got its start in Denver, even though the menu is more Mexican and California-inspired. Ells opened the first Chipotle across from the University of Denver in 1993. Within two years, he opened a second location, also in Denver. Today, there are more than 3,700 locations, including the very first Chipotle. It underwent a renovation and reopened in 2017, where it still serves up bowls, salads, and, of course, San Fran-style burritos. You can get Chipotle in most states, including Colorado and California, two that played pivotal roles in the early days of the restaurant. But if you're living in Hawaii or Alaska, you still have to endure a Chipotle-less life.

Even though Chipotle is more fast casual than fine dining, founder Steve Ells had formal culinary training and was a sous chef at Stars restaurant before he started Chipotle. He attended the Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1990, where he learned the basics of being a professional chef. It wasn't until much later that he decided to open up his first fast casual Chipotle restaurant. He focused on using whole ingredients and creating delicious flavors, inspired by the Mexican food he enjoyed in San Francisco. The restaurant just happened to take off and make Ells a legend among CIA alum.

This education helped Ells craft delicious recipes and inspired him to use only the best ingredients in Chipotle food. If you are a big fan of the sous vide-made barbacoa, one of the amazing salsas, or the house-made guac, you can thank the teachers at the Culinary Institute of America for inspiring and training Ells. Today, he's a proud alum, and shares his insight as both the chef and entrepreneur with current students and graduates. He even funds the Chipotle Mexican Grill Annual Scholarship, which awards $2,500 each year to someone in the industry whose work and approach are also consistent with sustainable practices.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be a cook on the Chipotle line, it all starts with time spent in an education program. Training is part of any new job, but Chipotle teaches new folks how to make the perfect burrito or just how much guac to scoop on the top of a bowl at "Avocado Academy."

This online training program trains new employees on how to make the restaurant's many dishes, from prep and cooking to the perfect burrito assembly. It serves as an orientation for new hires, who then go on to learn with hands-on training at the restaurant. New Chipotle employees learn about the company's philosophy in addition to how to wrap the perfect burrito. And if you've seen the size of the dishes coming down the Chipotle line, you know that this is no easy feat.

The platform is also used to ensure that all employees complete the required food safety training. They need to do this when they are first hired, before they can work with or serve food, as well as periodically as a refresher. Food safety training goes over how to prepare food to reduce the risk of foodborne illness, as well as cleanliness standards for the kitchen and restaurant.

Plenty of people have opened lemonade stands or sold cookies at a bake sale to raise money, but few have taken it so far as to open up a restaurant that becomes a global chain. When Steve Ells opened Chipotle, he was actually more interested in starting a fine dining restaurant. At that point in his career, Elle had been working as a sous chef at Stars in San Francisco to learn the ropes. He ultimately wanted to open up a restaurant of his own where he could show off his chops in the kitchen. Ells also wanted to create something that prioritized sustainable practices that resulted in delicious food.

Even though he intended Chipotle to raise needed funds and do well, Ells didn't expect the response that he got almost as soon as the Chipotle doors opened. When it started to do well on its own, he changed his plans and shifted to focus on Chipotle. The very first location is still open today and Ells said that it still holds a special place in his heart decades later. Even though he said that his original goal was to use Chipotle to launch his own "real restaurant," he realized that the approach of sustainable and unprocessed food that is still served quickly and conveniently is plenty "real" to happy customers.

If you found yourself bopping along to some music while enjoying your burrito at Chipotle, you're not alone. The music played over the speakers is intentional and the playlist is made by a single DJ and his small team.

Chipotle uses Studio Orca, a company that specializes in building playlists for restaurants and similar businesses. The key is to keep things upbeat and light without distracting from the dining experience and the customer's ability to chat at the table. DJ Chris Golub is the man behind the music. Rather than just turn to a Spotify playlist, he looks for new music that fits in with the Chipotle vibe. That means crossing into different genres and time periods rather than sticking to generic options. Golub even goes out to find new and interesting bands to include in the lineup.

If you love a track that you hear at Chipotle, you can ask the manager what song it is. If they don't know, they're generally happy to forward the question to Studio Orca. Golub and his small team reportedly love to share music, so they respond quickly to any interest in what they've collected. The team responds to queries within 48 hours and points happy listeners to new bands, albums, and songs.

In our opinion, one of the best add-ons to any Chipotle dish is the super flavorful guacamole, which is made in-house fresh each day. As the star ingredient in the mix, avocados are essential to making this tasty topping. Fortunately, Chipotle has an in with someone super special who you may not expect to be part of the avocado chain.

When he isn't singing, Jason Mraz is an avocado farmer at Mraz Family Farms. The farm sells to Chipotle, which uses avocados in guac. Mraz Family Farms is focused on sustainable agriculture practices and caring for plants, growers, customers, and the earth. This is in line with the Chipotle philosophy, which makes the partnership even better. 

Chipotle goes through an estimated 4.5 million cases of avocados each year. Given the popularity of the restaurant's guac, this isn't surprising. If you want to make guac using the same ingredients, you can order a box of avocados from Mraz Family Farms online. The store also carries passion fruit and coffee. Of course, you can also score free guac at Chipotle during certain promotions, but we promise it's worth the small upcharge even on a normal day.

When Steve Ells opened the first Chipotle restaurant, he calculated that he needed to sell 107 burritos every day to break even. Even though his intention was not to create a massively popular chain restaurant at the time, Ells still needed to turn a profit in order to fund his other goals. Fortunately for him, customers loved the food, told their friends, and came back for more and more. Within a month, he was pumping out almost 10 times that number.

Ells opened the first Chipotle in 1993 with a loan from his father. He was able to fund the opening of a second location just two years later using the profit from the first restaurant. The third restaurant opened in 1996 using a Small Business Administration loan and additional capital raised. While many businesses struggled to turn a profit at all in the first year, Chipotle far exceeded even what Ells hoped to do. In recent years, Chipotle has sold as many as 1.5 million burritos per day!

If you want to get a little bit more bang for your buck, go with a burrito bowl. This hack uses all of the same ingredients, which are customizable based on your preferences, in a large bowl. You can even reheat the leftovers later if you don't finish the massive dish all in one sitting.

Ells got his start-up capital from his father and used profits from the restaurant as well to open up the first few locations. But customers just loved the tasty burritos, so by 1998, it was time to get to the next level. Chipotle got financial backing from another popular fast-food chain as it expanded. It wasn't until McDonald's saw the potential in Ells' restaurant and decided to invest that Chipotle was able to really take off. McD's invested $360 million in 1998, which helped Chipotle grow from three restaurants to more than 2,300. By 2001, just three years after McDonald's initial investment, the company was the largest investor of those that backed Chipotle. Today, there are around 3,700 Chipotles all around the world.

When the company went public in 2006, McDonald's got out with a hefty payday. The stock went way up and McDonald's was able to recoup its investment and then some. The return for the original $360 million was around $1 billion for the golden arches. Just 8 years after opening the first Chipotle, Ells had grown a fast casual restaurant empire. So even though Chipotle and McDonald's occupy very different sections of the fast food and fast casual dining scenes, the two restaurants were actually quite close.

If there's one thing that Chipotle loves, it's tell other people how much they actually love the restaurant. From T-shirts to hats, the Chipotle swag is the perfect way to share your enthusiasm. But one item you may be surprised to find in the merch is soap. Taking inspiration from the people who swear the cilantro tastes like soap, the marketing geniuses at Chipotle decided to take things a step further and just make a soap.

No, you can't get soap at a Chipotle restaurant, but you can order one from Chipotle Goods. The soap is scented like cilantro, which some people say tastes like soap anyway. Ina Garten and Julia Child both famously hate cilantro, claiming that it has a soapy flavor that isn't suited to food. But whether you are in the camp of cilantro lovers or those who would just as soon keep it in the shower, an herby soap is a good answer.

The idea behind creating the soap was inspired by this weird taste phenomenon. It's made with a base of olive, coconut, flaxseed, and shea oils. Coriander essential oil provides the scent, coming from the same plant as leafy cilantro. Chlorella powder works to help with detoxification. 

Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle, has always been about sustainability and high-quality products. One of the best ways to do this is to reuse or repurpose food waste in new and inventive ways. When the brand launched Chipotle Goods, which includes apparel, some of them were dyed with avocado pit-made ink.

By simmering avocado pits in water, an ink forms that is then used to dye textiles. While you may expect a green or brown color to develop, the ink is actually pinkish red and gives clothing a light pink hue. The pits come from the restaurants themselves, putting an all-new meaning behind the company's commitment to reducing waste and responsible agriculture. It takes roughly five pits to get enough dye for one garment.

So the next time that you're sporting your Chipotle Goods swag, you can tell everyone that five orders of guac went into making your cool shirt. If you are a diehard avocado lover, sport the dyed apparel while shingling an avocado for your own guacamole. The avocado dye is used on t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tote bags, which are identified with this unique style in the store. You can get other Chipotle merch, but it won't have the same connection with your favorite guac.

Some locations have robots alongside human workers to make certain tasks easier or standardize portion sizes. The use of robots on the line isn't widespread (yet), but don't be surprised if one day soon you get your food made or delivered by the machines when you stop into Chipotle. Currently, the chef robots are just in the testing phase and are only used for certain tasks and food dishes which are ordered online. The robot has been affectionately named Hyphen.

In the tests, Hyphen only made orders placed online and was limited to the burrito bowls. The purpose of adding a robot was to take some of the more repetitive tasks off the shoulders of people working at Chipotle so that they could focus on the customer experience. Anyone ordering in person was still able to talk to an actual person, cooking and prepping their food.

The Autocado robot is also helping to make the guac process easier and less time-consuming. This robot, which is located at the Chipotle in Huntington Beach, California, slices and pits avocados, then scoops all of the flesh into a bowl. A person still mashes it by hand and combines it with other ingredients to finish the guac. But by making some of the steps easier and less tedious, it allows human workers to focus on the end result.