Exclusive: One low-tech move is the key behind Chipotle’s new all-electric restaurants

For nearly three decades, the experience of walking into a Chipotle fast-casual restaurant was defined by the sizzling sound of meat cooking on a gas grill. Whether for a burrito or a bowl, the food is cooked right in front of the customer, and the sounds and smell of that grill are inescapable.



Now, Chipotle is turning off the gas. With a new restaurant design being piloted in three locations, the chain has created all-electric restaurants running completely on renewable energy. Today, Chipotle is revealing the design behind this all-electric transformation. For the most part, the changes are fairly straightforward: more solar panels, no gas, heat pump water heaters, and shading built into the restaurant’s facade to reduce air-conditioning. The pilot restaurants recently opened with this new design are in Gloucester, Virginia, and Jacksonville, Florida, with a third location in Castle Rock, Colorado, expected to open this summer.



[Image: Chipotle]



The pilot restaurants are intended to be proving grounds for larger changes to the company’s 3,200 restaurants around the country, and part of its pledge to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline.



[Photo: Chipotle]



The changes may sound simple—solar panels and heat pumps are increasingly finding their ways onto and into more Americans’ homes—but a Chipotle restaurant has a far greater energy demand and carbon footprint than the typical residential building. One of the biggest areas of focus for the company was its kitchens, which have had gas-fired grills on display for walk-up customers since the company’s founding in 1993. A big part of the way Chipotle is cutting its energy and carbon use is by turning all those grills and other kitchen equipment electric. “It’s a huge departure for any kitchen, quick-serve fast food or sit-down fine dining, because most kitchen equipment throughout is gas-fired,” says Scott Shippey, Chipotle’s director of design.



[Photo: Chipotle]



It’s a challenge that other kitchens are facing as they move into fully electric buildings. At Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the campus’s 10,000-meals-a-day kitchen was recently completely reimagined to run on electricity only, which led to some menu changes but also the development of unique kitchen equipment, like an induction wok.



Chipotle wanted its change to be seamless. “We’re a restaurant company, and what can’t falter, what can’t change is the food,” says Shippey. The company says its new electric grills hit all the same temperature, food safety and food quality standards as conventional gas-fired grills.



[Image: Chipotle]



The kitchen also proved to be an opportunity to show off a sustainability focused design where many of the green credentials end up hidden away, like in more efficient mechanical systems, HVAC, and light bulbs. “They’re things the customer will never come into contact with,” Shippey says. “But the cook line is the heart of the kitchen. The cooking and preparation of the food, moving that toward being electrified, and then keeping our high standards, that’s the key to all this moving forward.”



Despite the restaurant’s modern-design intentions, Shippey accepts that most of the changes that will end up reducing the carbon footprint of the restaurant will be the boring stuff that no one sees or cares about. But one of the biggest carbon reductions may be hiding right before customer’s eyes.



[Image: Chipotle]



The exhaust hood that hangs over the grill—the low-tech stainless steel funnel used to corral and suck up the smoke and sizzle from cooking food—was given a simple but transformative redesign. Instead of being open to the air on all but the side that sits against the kitchen’s back wall, the hoods in the new pilot restaurants were amended with additional end panels on each side, helping them collect more smoke using less energy.



“It’s not something I think the customer’s going to walk into the store and notice or appreciate,” says Shippey, “but the energy efficiency of the hood, which is one of the biggest energy hogs in the kitchen, was improved dramatically.” The company estimates that the new hoods work between 30% and 35% more efficiently than the old ones.



[Photo: Chipotle]



Chipotle says it will have all-electric equipment in about 100 of the restaurants it plans to open in 2024, and may use other elements that are being implemented in these pilot restaurants. “The plan is to test and learn,” says Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs and food safety officer at Chipotle. “We’re already implementing some of these things that we know work really well into new restaurant designs and retrofits.”



Those retrofits may be significant. Chipotle’s 3,200 locations are all company owned. That means it can decide to make a change and get it into restaurants rapidly. “When we see something that’s working really well and we feel comfortable with the amount of testing we’ve done on it, we can quickly flip the switch,” Schalow says. The kitchen hoods will likely be one change that rolls out into both old and new locations. The company says it will likely be able to calculate energy savings and the economic impact within six months, but expects monthly utility savings at each of the pilot locations.



Some of these ideas may even make their way into the broader fast-casual and quick-serve food industries. Schalow says Chipotle is in conversations with competitors about what it’s learned from the all-electric pilot restaurants and is sharing that knowledge. “There are a lot of spaces where we are competitors—share of stomach, if you will,” Schalow says. “This is an area that we’re constantly talking with our industry counterparts about, sharing best practices, because this is what’s good for the environment.”