Brian Sozzi: Through the inflationary period seen in recent years for fast food, people have still seemed to have a love affair with Chipotle the brand. Why?
Brian Niccol: The mission that we have is "Food with Integrity." And what does that mean? Well, it means clean food. It means food that's raised the right way. It means it's food that's cooked and prepared the right way.
[Customers will] talk about how big the portions are with the burritos or the bowls that they build, but when you really boil it down, it is this commitment to Food with Integrity and the [cooking] that actually happens in our restaurants. It's all fresh food done right in front of you, and people are turned on by that, and the fact that we can get it done highly customized and highly fast, it's just meaningful bonus points.
Sozzi: It's really just the large portion size, come on.
Niccol: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, Brian. The customization so that you can get the bowl or the burrito the way you want — it is hugely valuable. If you want double meat, we'll do that for you. If you want a little extra rice, we'll do that for you. At the end of the day, however you want to eat, you ultimately feel good about what you're putting in your body. And I think that matters a lot to every generation and every income cohort out there.
Sozzi: How is AI and new automation technology going to change Chipotle's future? A new JP Morgan report said you were testing cameras that will help measure portion sizes so they are accurate; tell us more.
Niccol: I think there's definitely a future where we can be a lot more accurate in giving people consistent portion sizes, whether it's double guac on the side or in your bowl. And the reality is between vision, technology, and AI, I think we're going to be able to become a lot more accurate, without having to give up any speed in doing it. That's what I'm most excited about.
Sozzi: Is this the year where you test new vision technology in restaurants to improve order accuracy?
Niccol: We have not yet, but I'm optimistic that this is the year where we're going to do one or two of these things at least in a restaurant. And the thing that I'm really excited about is even the next generation [of this technology] that we're already working on.
And then when you get your crew members involved, you put it under the pressure of hundreds of transactions, you just learn so much. I think even on our Autocado [avocado peeling robots], we're already on like our third or fourth prototype, and now we're like okay, this is ready to go into a restaurant. I'm sure when we put it in the restaurant, we'll learn something that might cause us to iterate one more time.
Part of the process of this too is you've got to be comfortable with failing. Chippy [tortilla chip-making robot] didn't pan out the way we thought it would. Because of Chippy we ended up a lot better on Autocado. I'm committed to being a learning organization.
Sozzi: What went wrong with the Chippy robot testing?
Niccol: The biggest challenge was the cleaning of it. It just became way too cumbersome for the team to clean it. We took that learning for Autocado. Much earlier in the design we have to take into account what's going to take for the crew member to clean this thing.
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