The Challenge

As a company that pioneered a ‘no compromises’ attitude toward its product, Chipotle turned to Fahrenheit 212 to bring its ethos into its next-generation store design. Looking to update restaurants due to new challenges in real estate and growing digital behavior from consumers, the company needed an updated strategy and north star for its customer experience, as well as restaurant design to support its desire to grow to $1b in digital sales.

The Insight

The restaurant's history was defined by the elimination of compromises across the many systems that made up their business - from highly trained employees despite high-turnover category dynamics, to high-quality ingredients despite the need for scale. Discovering other compromises across the company’s approach to stores we set out to create a strategy and design approach that would kill those compromises.

The Outcome

The strategy included a portfolio of store types, each with a distinct business intent and suite of store features, as well as a modular approach to future store design that will enable the company to tailor each experience to the site type and local consumer.

The work also included the design of 4 Store of the Future prototypes (which broke ground in Q4 2019) - each with a portfolio of store innovations that more seamlessly fulfill new levels of digital order and delivery, a new sustainable architectural design that improves restaurant operations and experience, and a design evolution that re-establishes the restaurant to a lifestyle brand.

Collective Kitchen

The store is the place to break down divisions and manifest togetherness. It’s not about BoH versus FoH, it’s about appreciating the interconnectedness of the people and pieces involved in realizing Chipotle’s purpose. The store heightens people's awareness of their participation in something larger than themselves.

The defining attribute highlights the deconstruction of barriers to bring everyone to the kitchen together – its aesthetic and materials spill out to the full restaurant. It evokes a fundamental collective experience – preparing food in a kitchen with friends or family – a functional space becomes an emotional one.

Continuity, Togetherness, Exchange

Materials

Selected materials and textures contrast with people, emphasizing their presence while meeting sustainability recommendations, highlighting Chipotle's sustainability goals and practices within materiality and food.