E-Matura | Reading | Short answer | B2 | I did it my way

Read the text about the founder of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Steve Ells, then complete the sentences (1–7) using a maximum of 4 words. The first one (0) has been done for you.

I did it my way

As founder of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Steve Ells has never come across advice he couldn’t ignore, conventional wisdom he couldn’t flout, a rule he couldn’t break.

“I was always quite rebellious and did things my own way,” recalls Ells. “Friends said Mexican food is cheap – you can’t charge $ 5 for a burrito. But I said this is real food, the highest-quality food. Friends said you can’t have an open kitchen, but I wanted the restaurant to be like a dinner party, where everyone’s in the kitchen watching what’s going on. They said people have to order their meal by number. But I said no, you have to go through the line and select your ingredients. And everyone gave me grief over the name: Nobody’ll be able to pronounce it!”

Ells opened his first Chipotle (pronounced chi-poat-lay) in Denver 15 years ago. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he had long dreamed of running his own gourmet restaurant but needed to generate fast cash. He figured he’d open a taqueria and reinvent traditional Mexican food – lighten it up, make it sexier.

“I wanted layers of bold flavors that had nuance and depth, not just hot, not just spicy: cumin, cilantro, cloves, fresh oregano, lemon, and lime,” says Ells. “It looked, smelled and tasted different from traditional fast food. And it didn’t take long before there was a line of people waiting to get in! So I thought, maybe I’ll open just one more.”

Ells’s father, an executive in the pharmaceutical industry, invested $ 85,000 in the first restaurant. The second was funded with the profits and the third with a Small Business Administration loan. By the time Ells had a dozen restaurants, he’d given up on the idea of a single high-end one. He got the money for expansion from a surprising source, McDonald’s, first as a minority investor and then three years later as the majority shareholder.

McDonald’s put in $ 330 million over seven years and made $ 1 billion on its investment. “They funded our growth,” says Ells, “which allowed us to open 535 restaurants.” Chipotle went public in 2006, and McDonald’s sold its stake in the fast-growing chain, which now has 775 restaurants and revenues of over $ 1 billion. “We learned from each other,” Ells says of the partnership,

“but we use different kinds of food, and we aim for a different kind of experience and culture altogether. So we ended up going our separate ways.”

Ells defied convention yet again when he decided the company would buy only pasture-farmed pork, raised on a vegetarian diet and free of artificial hormones and antibiotics. The price of the pork burrito went up a dollar – but its sales doubled, proving people were willing to pay more for a superior product.

Ells hasn’t changed the original menu. He just keeps adding more organic produce from more sustainable resources. His goal is nothing less, he says, than “revolutionizing the way America grows, gathers, serves, and eats food.”