Chipotle Case Summary

This section addresses Chipotle’s sales performance from 2012 to 2016. The following graph exhibits Chipotle’s total sales revenue during this period. As shown in the graph, Chipotle has consecutive revenue growth until 2015. The most impressive increase in revenue took place in 2014, thanks to the increase of customer visits as well as the increase of average expenditure per customer in that year (Chipotle, 2015). Because of the E.coli outbreak during the late 2015, which devastated Chipotle’s sales in the fourth quarter, the increase in revenue in 2015 was comparatively modest and primarily due to new restaurant openings (Chipotle, 2016). In 2016, the company’s sales revenue largely decreased as a result of the E. coli outbreak (Chipotle, 2017). Due to the timing of the incident, the negative impact of the E. coli outbreak is clearly more observable in the financial results of 2016, …show more content…
The next graph displays Chipotle’s average sales per restaurant from 2012 to 2016. As indicated in the graph, Chipotle’s average sales per restaurant increased from 2012 to 2014, reaching the peak of $2.3 million in 2014. Then, the average sales per restaurant suffered a slight decrease in 2015, before dropping drastically to $1.74 million per restaurant in 2016. The slight decrease in the average sales per restaurant in 2015 clearly reflected the negative shock of the foodborne illness outbreak, although the impact is still more prominent in the result of 2016.

Regarding the number of restaurants that Chipotle operates, this number has been growing steadily for the past five years. Chipotle successfully added 840 locations, expanding from 1,410 restaurants in 2012 to 2250 restaurants in