Chipotle 'not going to quit' until all ingredient shortages stop, CFO says

Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung discusses the supply interruptions that have been causing some Chipotle locations to run out of ingredients.

You can watch the entire interview here.

Key takeaways

00:28: On running out of ingredients

00:45: On how Chipotle is navigating the shortages

Video Transcript

JACK HARTUNG: Yeah, we've spent a lot of time over the last three months dealing with the activations. And this really, Brian, has happened over the last couple of years. With COVID, we had things like supply interruptions. Distribution trucks didn't arrive to the restaurant on time. We've had call-offs. Our folks come in, like, 7:00, 8 o'clock in the morning to start prep so that we can open up at 10:30. If you have one call-off, you're going to fall behind on things like cutting onions, making the salsas, marinating the meats, things like that.

And so all those things were hitting us over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, we kind of got into the habit of, it's OK to be out of ingredients. Well, we really focused on that in the last three months. We've had kind of an all hands on deck to make sure the supplies are arriving to the restaurant, that when there's a call-off, you bring somebody else in, or you bring an extra person in, in case there is a call-off.

And you make sure that you are getting the ingredients into the back door, that you're prepping the ingredients so that when we open up the doors at 10:30, we have all these ingredients. We've made tremendous progress. I would say we've solved about 80% of the problem. So we're not back to 100% yet, Brian, but we've made such good progress, and we're not going to quit until every ingredient is available every time a customer comes in.