Chipotle Mexican Grill

**Strong Q3 Performance**: Chipotle reported a 13% increase in sales for Q3 2023, reaching approximately $2.8 billion, driven by a 6% comparable store sales growth, with over 3% of that attributed to transaction growth. In-restaurant sales surged by 80% year-over-year, showing strong momentum post-summer seasonality.

**Guidance and Future Growth**: The company is maintaining its full-year guidance of mid to high single-digit comparable sales growth, anticipating continued acceleration in transaction trends throughout Q4. There is an expectation to increase new restaurant openings in 2025 to achieve closer to 10% net growth, with a range of 315 to 345 openings planned for that year.

**Challenges with Costs and Margins**: Restaurant-level margin fell to 25.5%, down 80 basis points compared to the previous year, mainly due to inflation in ingredient costs (especially avocados and dairy) and increased portion sizes. The company expects cost of sales in Q4 to rise to about 31% as they fully roll out the Smoked Brisket menu item, although they anticipate these increases can be managed through operational efficiencies.