Steve Ells Quotes

Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.

If somebody told me you'd be a one and a half billion dollar company and be the largest in the world, I wouldn't have believed it myself.

I feel that 'Tokoyo Drift' blew people away because not many people had high expectations for it.

Behind Chipotle is not a corporation; behind Chipotle is a man that is one of the great cooks, that created a great concept.

My business has doubled in ways I couldn't have imagined.

I was voted least likely to manage a business when I was at Dickinson College.

Auntie Anne's is a modern-day business miracle that never should have happened.

I'm the voice of a Chipotle Burrito. The world has changed.

I didn't know I could even be a professional tennis player, honestly. All this is actually very, very unexpected.

We never could have foreseen the success of 'Babel.' It's not like banjo records were soaring up the charts, you know.

I always said whoever brings Mexican food to New York would make a million dollars. Then Chipotle happened, which is fine.

Look at 'Dulhe Raja.' It was a film made very quietly on the sidelines, and suddenly, when the film was released, it struck gold. I never expected the film to do well.

Chipotle was wildly successful, and I thought, 'Well, let me open one more.'

You never think your song's gonna be on the radio. Until it is.

When we started off, we weren't even thinking of being a global band. We just ended up becoming that.

The idea for Chipotle is a sort of combination of food borrowed from Stars and sort of a technique and a service format borrowed from the taquerias.

Chipotle is based on a very simple idea: We start with great ingredients, prepare them using classic cooking techniques, and serve them in a way that allows people to get exactly what they want.

We never thought we'd be commercially viable, and we were proved wrong.

I didn't expect all of this success to come so quickly.

We had a bunch of 'we's - a fitness concept, a restaurant concept. The first business plan we had included all of them.

There's a place called Chipotle in the U.S. It's Mexican food where everything is made to order; you can get some rice, black beans, and meat. That's what I eat three times a day.

I love Chipotle. And I'm not just saying that. Like, I genuinely am in love with Chipotle.

I honestly never dreamed at the time that I would one day own the Starbucks and or be in a position where we would have more than 10,000 stores around the world. It has just been an incredible journey for all of us.

I started with shoes, and with hard work and discipline, the business prospered. I moved to the department store business and again, things went well.

Yeah, handsome, great big guy, seven feet tall! Name is Rick Miller - Portland, Oregon. And he started a business. Of course you know it was in basketball. But it wasn't in basketball! I mean, I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport.