today marks the “analyst call” for chipotle’s quarter 1 2007. the numbers were pretty darn good. yahoo has a piece on it and so does bizjournals. i’m sure the local denver press will cover it tomorrow morning (and then wonder why their circulation is down 1% in the last 6 months while chipotle’s same store sales are up 8.3% in “same store” sales).

There were two things I thought were worth noting from the call:

Food With Integrity - Changing the Way Americans Think about Fast Food

About the food with integrity mission, Ells said:

We recently introduced naturally raised chicken in one of our largest markets, Colorado, and now two-thirds of the chicken we serve is naturally raised. As we advance Food With Integrity, we move closer to our goal of changing the way Americans think about and eat fast food.

Think about that for a minute. It’s not just a burrito join. The mission of Chipotle is Food With Integrity that changes the way you think about and eat fast food. Ok. That’s nice.

Valuing Their People

From my meeting with Houman Iskandani that was inspired by his appearance on their soda cups, it’s clear that chipotle wants to make Rock Stars out of their employees.

Our restaurant managers are the strongest they have ever been, as more of them are being promoted from our talented crew people. By preparing their crew to become future leaders, our best managers are creating a strong and sustainable culture of opportunity and people development.

They clearly care about their employees and want them to grow - promoting from within line crew to store managers - store managers to regional managers. When you’re a franchise you don’t have that opportunity, but since the stores are almost all company owned Chpotle does have the ability to promote from within. Not a bad idea at this point…

As I have said before, don’t worry about why Chipotle won’t let you franchise - just by the stock.

I have to rate Chipotle a buy - both the burritos and the stock ;)