On its earning call this afternoon, Chipotle announced that it’s continuing to grow like crazy with revenue of $690.9 million which is up 20.9 percent from a year ago. That was actually below analyst expectations of $707 million but it’s still pretty impressive growth. That includes an 8 percent increase in same-restaurant sales plus an increase in the number of overall restaurants.
They said they opened their first Paris outlet this quarter and have been stocking up their UK office with newly trained “restaurateurs”—i.e., managers they really like—to push for a larger expansion into Europe. So someone at least sees Europe as a growth opportunity! Obviously Europe is tragically undersupplied with even vaguely passable Tex-Mex (Sweden’s Taco Bar chain, for example, will be easily blown out of the water by Chipotle) so you could easily see this working even if the European economy totally collapses.
