Chipotle started out as a single restaurant in Denver by a man named Steve Ells who opened the restaurant with around $80,000. Within five years, he opened 16 more Chipotle restaurants, which all had an incredible amount of success. After McDonalds invested $315 million in their company, they became even more successful and were making more money then Ells had originally thought. By the time Chipotle went public, they had opened more than 500 different locations around the country. Today, Chipotle is worth around $12 billion. All of the food that they sell is made from fresh ingredients, which means high quality food, but is also prepared inside the restaurant, giving it the fast food aspect. Ells is very conscientious about saving money so he makes many smart decisions in…show more content… There are now over 1400 stores in the United States. Ells made a decision to go international by opening new restaurants in Canada and Europe. There is also a lot of talk about Chipotle raising their menu prices by the end of the year because of their slowing revenue and same store sales growth. 1/3 of their sales are spent on fresh ingredients and when they are compared to other fast food chains, they spend a very small amount on marketing. Their labor costs are reasonable because they put so much emphasis on the quality of their employees and they are not worried about increasing labor costs. Every year, Chipotle holds the Cultivate Festival, which is meant to serve as a marketing event that includes cooking demos, free food, and educational speeches about a variety of food related topics. Chipotle also takes pride in their advertising methods, which they believe sets them apart from other fast food restaurants. One of their methods includes a short web series called “Farmed and Dangerous” that bashes the negative aspects of industrialized