To Paris via London

Taking Chipotle - an iconic Mexican-inspired brand with its distinctive flavors, customer experience, and employee culture - to a European audience was fraught with unexpected twists and challenges. We couldn’t take a single step for granted as we made the leap from Toronto to London. Join me as I reflect on some of the highs and lows of bringing Chipotle overseas.

Before I could commit to leaving Toronto, I had to have my replacement ready. Cue Amy Lane , a fellow Restaurateur from my time in Austin. Serendipitously, her spouse is originally from Canada. A career opportunity for Amy and a return to the homeland for her spouse made this a promising way to ensure Chipotle continued to have a strong leader at the helm. Amy is a great operator and a phenomenal leader, so the transition went off without a hitch. Toronto’s restaurants were in good hands. Check!

Chipotle’s first couple of restaurants in London couldn’t rely on a commissary to centralize production of salsas or braised meats. Part of expanding into Europe then meant we had to learn how to cook everything in-house. In those days, Chipotle operated a test kitchen hidden inside a fully functioning Chipotle restaurant in New York City. Under the guidance of Joel Holland , Nate Appleman , and founder-Steve Ells, the European-landing team mastered the art of creating perfectly cooked carnitas and wonderfully seasoned barbacoa from scratch. It was exhilarating, taking Chipotle back to 1993, when Steve opened his first location across from The University of Denver. In the years that followed, as they scaled across the United States, Chipotle never compromised on their legendary quality. But cooking in-house was on another level. We were cooking in-house because we had to. And the food was incredible. Our European customers were in for a real treat!?

As I boarded the plane for London, I carried with me all of the knowledge and experience with McDonald’s and Chipotle over the years, from Albuquerque to Salt Lake City to Austin to Toronto. I was filled with hope, excitement, and determination as I sat in my seat for the flight. In a lot of ways, I was heading home, too. The maternal side of my family is English and I’ve grown up splitting my time between there and the United States. But never as a professional working at this level. After landing, the sounds were familiar, looking left before crossing the street was familiar, and adding "cheers", "lovely", "ta", and "smashing" back into my vocabulary was awesome. Also, having lived in different counties growing up, I felt comfortable being in environments where I had to navigate cultural nuances in business practices and consumer preferences. Now it was time to take all that and add burritos into the mix.?

My colleague Jacob M Sumner arrived from Chicago where he was the Area Manager. Together, we set off to build Chipotle from the ground up in London. We had to source ingredients, build relationships with vendors, and hire a restaurant team that had, for the most part, never heard of Chipotle. We worked closely with Chipotle’s Chief Development Officer Rex Jones and legendary builder ??♂? Julian Church to create a flagship restaurant on Charing Cross Road in London's West End. This location is smack dab in the middle of the famous theatre district, a short walk from Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street, and cafes and bars of Soho. It was a nearly ideal place to set up, work out the kinks, and introduce burritos to the Brits.

After a ton of work and some disappointment with suppliers that couldn’t (or wouldn’t) meet our standards or commit to scaling with us, we were finally able to secure vendors, procure high quality ingredients, and build out an amazing space in which to work. The cheeses were slightly different and had much more flavor since the dairy cows grazed on different grasses, getting a large amount of fresh avocados was difficult since it wasn’t, at the time, a popular ingredient, and fresh green tomatillos were being flown in from anywhere they were grown; usually Mexico. And at a high cost. Some farmers in the Netherlands came through in the end to help support our high green tomatillo needs.

We partnered with a third-party recruiting firm to help with hiring our first team. We did job fairs and attracted immense interest which was exciting. One challenge was describing what the job would be to a team that had never experienced the food or visited a Chipotle in real life. So, we instead created a vision that included building a team of top performers who were empowered to achieve high standards and would help change how people think about and eat "fast" food. Our service was fast, the food was slow. And delicious. In the end, our first team in London hailed from six continents and more nationalities than I can remember. A truly diverse team that represented the international mix of people in London and who had some incredible stories and experiences to share.?

Cooking in-house was… fun. Our Angelo Po combi-ovens we used to cook our braised meats and red and green tomatillo salsas were like Ferraris: high performance but also highly temperamental. We had to become “mechanics” to ensure they operated at their very best. More than once, we'd arrive early in the morning to find the overnight cooking was interrupted and we wouldn’t have a full menu to offer. We fixed that by simply arriving much earlier in the morning, just in case. Our rockstar kitchen managers, Nikola Hlinkova (future Restaurateur) and Darlan Sell , were immensely talented and completely invested in creating the very best food. I doubt we’d have been successful without them.

We opened in May 2010 and we did everything possible to build the business. There was buzz within the American expat community in London and around Europe. We got a strong steady stream of guests from the get-go. One thing Steve Ells impressed on us was that the size of the burritos in the US had grown too big over the years. It wasn’t the size of the portion that concerned him as much as the flavor, that perfect mix of quality ingredients and flavors that makes for the perfect burrito. Our first customers, many of which were visiting Americans, felt different. They were nostalgic for the ginormous burritos they remembered from home. We stuck to our guns for a little while then eventually we would customize the size of the burrito for the person. When we heard some scream "Oh my gosh!" with a midwestern accent then we knew to add a bit more of each ingredient to satisfy their craving. In addition, we had to take a little longer explaining the line, the ingredients, and how spicy the medium salsa is to new customers. Adapting on the fly and customizing our engagement with each guest.?

We tested doing some menu items differently, too. Instead of diced tomato salsa (some call it pico de gallo), we roasted the tomatoes which brought out a more nuanced flavor. We also worked with a local tortilla company to create a whole wheat tortilla that would eventually make it stateside. Steve was more adventurous with the menu in our small, remote market. It wasn’t disruptive to the brand, we didn’t need to accommodate the immediate scale of over a thousand restaurants, and we had a ton of fun doing it.?

The American expat community found Chipotle very quickly. But we needed to capture the locals to ensure a robust business and continued success and growth. I remember sitting with Jacob when a guest came in and promptly turned around and left. Jacob got up and chased them down the street to get them back in. He walked them through the line and bought their meal. His request for mushy peas (it was the guacamole) was hilarious. This person was hooked and immensely thankful if not a little freaked out. One customer at a time.?

Brand building also included activities outside of the restaurant. At the time, Chipotle was a sponsor of the Garmin-Slipsteam Cycling Team and the Tour de France was coming soon. Although there weren't any legs of Le Tour in England this particular year, we used it as an opportunity to build awareness since we'd be expanding from the UK into continental Europe soon. We packed up our team, our ingredients and in Pau, France, during the Tour's rest day, we fed the team after getting to watch everyone cross the finish line. Such a thrill for all of us and something we'd continue to do for many years to come.

Maintaining focus on the three key pillars (great people, great food, great space) helped us achieve robust sales growth and we began looking for more sites in London. We had the empowered people culture, the delicious food, and the brand was building. Now, let’s do this again. Except this time in French… Allons-y!