Scott Boatwright’s tenure as CEO of Chipotle officially began in November, when he shed an August-placed interim tag following the departure of Brian Niccol to Starbucks. Before, he spent seven years as COO of the fast casual and 18 years prior clocking various leadership roles, including SVP of operations, at Arby’s Restaurant Group (which eventually evolved to Inspire Brands).
Given that resume, it’s not all that surprising to see how he’s led one of the category’s fastest-growing and top-performers of late. At a leadership summit his first month as CEO, a theme of being “guest obsessed” emerged, Boatwright said. The larger notion was an uncomplicated one—as Chipotle scales off back-to-back record expansion years en route to 7,000 restaurants—“everything we do is in service of our guests, or those who serve our guests,” Boatwright said Tuesday during Chipotle’s Q4 recap. “This will require an understanding and a focus on how each role in the organization matters up to making the experience in our restaurants better every day.”
There are a few webs to this approach, but the center runs through the same priorities Boatwright championed in recent years as COO. Namely, operations and throughput and the pillars of “running successful restaurants with a people-accountable culture.”
Boatwright said a key driver at Chipotle, all innovation and headline-grabbing changes included, is one of the oldest adages there is—the benefit of an experienced general manager; a GM who understands the importance of throughput and can train and develop crew members to execute Chipotle’s pillars. The company’s GM turnover improved in 2024, Boatwright said, and today is among the lowest levels in the company’s history (here are some 2023 stats; Chipotle typically releases figures in the spring).
“More stability among our GMs results in more stability in our restaurants,” Boatwright said, “and stability coupled with consistent training and reps has been a big drivers of the progress we have seen.”
In 2024, throughput at Chipotle improved by about two entrees in the peak 15-minute period. The chain achieved its near-term target to reach the mid-20s.
Chipotle conducts weekly throughput reviews across restaurant support centers to keep the vision top of mind, Boatwright added, and to provide leaders insights needed to give coaching and feedback at the store level.
The company also made the call last quarter to have the manager on duty responsible for the expo position. That lifted the percentage of locations with one in place to more than 60 percent. Despite progress, though, Boatwright said, throughput remains a top whitespace area for this year ahead.
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But while this specific Chipotle initiative has been operating at the surface for years—really at the forefront with “Project Square One” coming out of COVID’s recalibration—Boatwright recently began to lift the lid on “one of the important unlocks” in 2025 and beyond: Modernizing the back of the house.
Boatwright said doing so is a plan he owns because he was reluctant for “many, many years” as COO to make wholesale changes to how Chipotle delivers on experience. It took him a long time to get comfortable with equipment innovations that would modify, if you will, the “knife-and-cutting board process” presently in place, he said.
“I’ve gotten comfortable,” Boatwright noted of what’s changed, “because we still need the knife and cutting boards and we create a better, consistent cut size, which ladders to a better consistent recipe and taste profile. So if we can generate that experience and be more efficient and have better culinary, I am all in.”
Essentially, the technology and options evolved. Boatwright now sees a path where more Chipotle stores complete prep on time, leading to better execution during peak periods. And so, expect an amplification ahead, of which there are several pilots at hand.
As revealed last quarter, Chipotle is in the middle of rolling out produce slicers to all restaurants, with a projected summer completion. Fresh chopped produce in-store, every day, is vital to culinary standards, Boatwright said. Yet it’s also one of Chipotle’s most time-consuming tasks.
The slicer reduces the time to chop produce and improves food by ensuring consistent cut sizes, like he referenced. Some of the efficiencies will also help offset investments made last year to ensure generous portion sizes in the wake of some social media chatter.
Over the last several months, Chipotle began a new initiative in a crop of restaurants to better understand the synergistic benefits of installing the produce slicer, its previously talked-about dual-side plancha, three-pan rice cooker, and dual-vat fryer in the same restaurant.
The dual-sided plancha, in particular, cooks chicken and steak in less than half the time it takes the traditional version, but with the same sear and char alongside better consistency and juiciness, Boatwright said. The rice cooker eliminates the large pots and cooks rice in the pans you see on the line. That, too, he added, leads to more uniform quality and streamlines the cooking process. Meanwhile, the dual-vat fryer doubles capacity for frying chips. Again, higher quality, Boatwright said, and reduced time to improve availability. These labor tasks can be redeployed toward other efforts, like throughput.
Based on initial results, Chipotle decided to roll out all four pieces of equipment to new restaurant openings beginning later in 2025. “And as we gain more data and insights into this initiative, we will determine if and how we roll out more broadly to existing restaurants,” Boatwright said. “This is a great example of how we’re beginning to look at our tools and processes and conventions holistically rather than as bolt-on additions.”
The end goal, he continued, will be for Chipotle to bolster the experience of employees by making tasks easier to execute, more efficient, faster, and more consistent without ceding any ground on what makes the brand what it is in customers’ minds. Additionally, there are some long-term innovations in the works, like the cut, coring, and scooping “Autocado” and augmented digital makeline with Hyphen. Both are being piloted in live restaurants.
“When we improve the experience for our restaurant teams, it ladders to a better guest experience,” Boatwright said. “Exceptional in-restaurant and digital experiences coupled with our powerful marketing strategy to make the brand more visible, more relevant, and more loved, builds the brand momentum and results in year after year of transaction growth.”
The idea Chipotle would start placing this quadrant of equipment into new stores isn’t a miniscule development. The brand opened 119 corporate stores (it doesn’t franchise domestically) in Q4 alone to bring its fiscal full-year total to 304 new restaurants. Chipotle debuted 271 venues in 2023, giving it 547 openings over a two-year, watermark stretch for the company. And it expects another 315–345 restaurant openings in 2025. Also to note, 257 of the 304 in 2024 included the order-ahead “Chipotlane.” There are now 1,068 of those—a push that began just over five years ago and will comprise 80 percent of go-forward expansion.
The “Chipotlane” currently makes up more than 25 percent of Chipotle’s footprint (it ended the year with 3,726 total restaurants). Boatwright said, on average, the Chipotlane takes less than 30 seconds to complete the order pickup process; customers order ahead, not on site, and roll through the lane to the handoff point. The added convenience has proven incremental, he added, as Chipotlanes generate better revenues, margins, and returns than non-Chipotlanes opened at the same time. “It can also be seen in the mix of business as Chipotlanes have a larger pickup mix,” Boatwright said, “mostly offset by a lower delivery mix.”
It’s been a while since Chipotle broke out specifics, but in the early days the company said Chipotlanes were hitting the market with sales 20 percent higher than traditional formats and operating with 200 basis-points higher restaurant-level margin. That incremental profit, at the time, offset the $75,000–$100,000 cost of one and yielded cash-on-cash returns of at least 500 basis points above standard units, analysts predicted. Also, to Boatwright’s point, they drove a roughly 15 percent higher overall digital sales mix—vital in the growing era of delivery commissions.
Chipotle started testing the earlier generation iteration in late 2018, had a handful in 2019, and, by summer 2021, touted 250. There were 500 scattered across North America come November 2022 and the 1,000th Chipotlane opened November in Olathe, Kansas.
Some winter volatility, tariffs, sales trends, and more ahead
Chipotle’s revenue in Q4 lifted 13.1 percent to $2.8 billion. Same-store sales bumped 5.4 percent (13.8 percent two-year stack), comprised of 4 percent traffic and a 1.4 percent lift in average check. Digital sales mixed 34.4 percent of F&B revenue. Operating margin was 14.6 percent, an increase from 14.4 percent. And restaurant-level operating margin of 24.8 percent, a decrease from 25.4 percent. The quarter measured against a Carne Asada LTO from last year and also factored in some December holiday challenges impacted by calendar shifts (Christmas and New Year’s falling in the middle of their respective weeks). Chipotle led with brisket as an LTO in Q4. Transaction comps reported positive every month.
For the year, Chipotle’s same-store sales gained 7.4 percent on top of 2023’s 7.9 percent (15.3 percent two-year view). That broke apart as higher transaction of 5.3 percent and a 2.1 percent rise in average check. Digital sales of $3.9 billion represented 35 percent of mix.
Boatwright hinted Chipotle is working on the idea of leaning into an AI assistant to help with customer journeys. For example, it’s a new pre-defection journey. “When the model detects that a customer’s behavior is changing in a particular way that would signal a propensity for churn, we will take them on a new journey with personalized extras and offers to encourage them to reengage,” he said.
Average-unit volumes today are $3.2 million—a figure Chipotle wants to push to $4 million.
Chipotle expects its same-store sales to run in the low- to mid-single-digit range in 2025 with positive traffic.
CFO Adam Rymer said comps have been volatile thus far in 2025, owing to weather having a larger impact on sales than the prior year. He said underlying trends are healthy and there’s a strong plan but given a difficult lap from 2024 and some other factors, a low- to mid-single-digit comp is in sight. In Q2, Chipotle will roll off about 90 basis points of pricing in April when it laps the action taken last year in California to offset the FAST Act. Easter will fall back in Q2 as well.
January, thanks to weather and the calendar shift, reported negative 2 percent traffic. Adding in a “very small” impact from the L.A. wildfires, Chipotle absorbed a 400-basis-point hit to start the year.
Rymer said Chipotle expects cost of sales in Q1 to be in the higher 20 percent range, as pricing leverage and the benefit from brisket ramping down will be partially offset by higher costs across several items, most notably avocados and chicken.
But that guidance does not include the potential impact of new tariffs on items imported from Mexico, Canada, and China. Chipotle sources about 2 percent of sales from Mexico (avocados, tomatoes, limes, and peppers), and less than 0.5 percent from Canada and China. If recently proposed tariffs go into full effect, Rymer said, it would have an ongoing impact of roughly 60 basis points on Chipotle’s cost of sales. About 50 percent of Chipotle’s avocado supply comes out of Mexico. It’s moved some country of origins in recent years to diversify vendors. So today, Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic all supply Chipotle in addition to Mexico.
Pricing should sit at about 2 percent in 2025, he added, assuming no additional measures are needed. Chipotle took 2 percent in December that will carry through December of this year.
As for what’s ahead, Boatwright said the brand ended the year leading and gaining momentum in categories such as “high-quality ingredients, value for the money, healthy and nutritious, good amount of food for the money, and brand I love. And we have a strong plan for 2025 to keep the momentum going.”
Chipotle began 2025 by placing a spotlight on lifestyle goals and healthy habits and struck its second partnership with app Strava, which has more than 135 million users in 190-plus countries. The chain’s Honey Chicken Pilot, Boatwright said, was the best-performing LTO, in early sensory as well as broader market tests. That should reach restaurants “in the near future.”
The company promoted more than 23,000 people across divisions in 2024, including more than 85 percent of all restaurant management roles coming from internal hires.
Chipotle elevated three regional VPs who started as crew members. Now, five of the 11 began their Chipotle careers at the start of the ladder and worked their way up to the highest level of operations (managing a region with sales north of $1 billion). Collectively, Boatwright said, these five RVPs boast more than 100 years of Chipotle experience. To get there, they had to run successful sub-regions and show the ability to develop and grow leaders—the group promoted more than 30 team directions, nearly 100 field leaders, and “hundreds” of GMs between them.
Chipotle touched on international expansion a bit as well. It ended the calendar with 85 restaurants outside the U.S., including 55 in Canada, 27 in Europe, and three in the Middle East. Boatwright said the company will accelerate growth in Canada and the Middle East this year and continue to progress its economic model in Europe and “begin to build a pipeline for growth.”
Overall, Boatwright said, Chipotle’s ops teams have never been on better footing as than they are today regarding staffing, app model, and the best retention numbers he’s seen since joining the company. “Culture is really strong in the organization today,” he said. “And we’re set up for what could be an extraordinary year around this idea of improving this guest experience, the total guest experience.”
