adminCurt Garner’s rise from answering phones for $6 an hour to running Chipotle’s technology and strategy is the kind of American success story conservatives celebrate — grit, ingenuity, and a refusal to accept the status quo. Forbes detailed his decade-long crusade to drag Chipotle out of the fax-machine era and into a modern digital powerhouse on November 18, 2025.
What Garner helped build is nothing short of a private-sector revolution: digital sales that were a mere 5 percent of revenue in 2015 ballooned into a multibillion-dollar engine, approaching more than a third of the company’s revenue by 2024. That’s the payoff when a company stops relying on bureaucratic excuses and empowers leaders who know technology and operations.
The trend didn’t stop there — Chipotle’s own filings show digital sales represented roughly 36.7 percent of food and beverage revenue in the third quarter of 2025, with multi-quarter figures hovering in the mid-30s as the company scales Chipotlanes and other tech-forward formats. Those numbers prove what conservatives have long argued: when businesses innovate, customers benefit and markets respond.
Garner didn’t just slap a bandage on an app; he rewired operations to make digital orders faster and higher-margin, rolled out a rewards program that turned casual buyers into loyal customers, and pushed the Chipotlane pickup format that materially boosts sales at new restaurants. This is disciplined, results-oriented leadership — the opposite of corporate virtue-signaling that prioritizes optics over profit.
He’s also pragmatic about new tech: Chipotle’s AI initiatives, like the Avo Cado onboarding tool, doubled job applications and cut administrative onboarding time dramatically, while a $100 million Cultivate Next fund backs startups in robotics, AI, and sustainable supply chains. Conservatives should applaud this marriage of capital and innovation instead of assuming every use of AI is sinister.
Yes, the market can be unforgiving. Chipotle has faced declining traffic and a slumping stock this year, and even had to trim guidance amid inflation and shifting consumer budgets — real-world problems highlighted by reporters and the company’s own statements in late 2025. But those short-term pains don’t erase the structural strength created by smart, profit-driven investments in technology and customer experience.
Let’s be blunt: if more American companies hired and empowered leaders like Curt Garner instead of chasing political trends and bureaucratic cover, we’d see stronger balance sheets and more resilient businesses. Policymakers should stop penalizing success with heavy-handed regulation and crippling tariffs, and instead unleash entrepreneurship that creates jobs and raises living standards.
The Chipotle story is a reminder that free enterprise works when it’s allowed to work — take risks, invest in people and technology, and the customers will follow. Garner’s work shows the path forward: private-sector ingenuity, hard-nosed execution, and loyalty to customers and employees over woke platitudes will always win in the long run.
