In 1993, the first Chipotle Mexican Grill (pronounced chi-POAT-lay) restaurant in Denver, Colorado, was opened by CEO and founder, Steve Ellis, after receiving $165,000 in investments from a bank loan and his father (Pederson). Ellis, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and former chef, started the company's first restaurant to raise the funds needed to one day operate his own full-service restaurant (Berta). The company's menu includes burritos, tacos, salads and burrito bowls (non-tortilla burritos) made with your choice of pork, shredded beef, chicken, steak, beans, vegetables and burrito toppings (sour cream, salsa, etc.) of customers (annual report). When Chipotle was founded, Ellis disliked the restaurant's closed kitchen format because customers often had to yell their food orders to employees cooking in the back of the building. This format did not meet customers' needs for direct contact with employees and to have full control over the choice of ingredients within meals as kitchen staff could make mistakes on orders due to misunderstandings. This forced the founder to change the restaurant's current format to an open kitchen design where customers could actually see and choose fully prepared ingredients to order on a buffet assembly line while still being able to speak directly face to face with the employees (Pederson). A couple of years later, Chipotle opened a few more restaurants in the Denver area, each generating $1 million in sales through word-of-mouth marketing and employing approximately 17 workers at each facility (Pederson). In 1998, McDonald's Corporation purchased a minority stake in Chipotle as a way to increase their company's sales as sales took place in their rest... middle of paper... illegal immigrants who worked in their restaurants. The company was forced by the US Department of Homeland Security to separate more than 500 undocumented workers. The separation of over 500 employees negatively affected the operations of the Chipotle store as most of their workers were immigrants, forcing Moran to travel to Washington DC and convince members of congress to repeal the current immigration laws (Pederson). In better news, the company was able to raise its stock and be included in S&P's Distinguished 500 stock index (Pederson). By the end of 2012, the company owned more than 1200 stores in the United States, Paris, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The company also owns an Asian-inspired restaurant called ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen in Washington D.C. Chipotle hopes to expand its ShopHouse restaurant concept to other areas including Los Angeles, California later in the year 2013