It is well below it’s all-time high and priced for perfection, but Chipotle’s is one of those companies that I will break my rules to own. I own it and my fund owns it. I have written about it often and had very good success with the stock.
Restaurant stocks are hard to own. The stocks are volatile. You have monhly sales numbers, saturation issues, year over year sales, zit faced kids, food costs, leases etc…
I have lost my ass in retaurant ventures, but Chipotle’s is not a venture. It is a purebread and will likely trade at a premim for some time. Even their website is kick ass.
The catalyst is it’s potential. It is tiny in terms of restaurant size (530 stores). Mr. Burrito himself says there are none in DC-Virgina. I trust a guy who blogs about Burrito’s :) .
I don’t have much to add to all my posts on the subject. I love the food, love the margins,love the execution and love the potential.
Disclosure – Long Chipotle’s
No… Mr Burrito says there are none in Massachusetts :) I live in DC and there are 3 different Chipotle’s within walking distance from my apartment. They’re great!!
There aren’t any down in new orleans (even pre-disaster) but that’s not surprising, due to the fact that chain stuff tends to do badly.
If it’s really good, it might manage, but even Starbucks has problems here. I have heard good things about it from people I trust about food, so maybe?
i too have made the 184.4 mile trip boston to manhattan to get chipotle. not sure id invest in many restaurants; the business model is just too easy to copy.
Something just dawned on me when I was eating my chips, salsa and burrito. Every WallStrip blogger, myself included, is missing the point on Chipotle. You came close in your last sentence. Energy is the most important factor in this company. Not energgy as in oil, energy as in life. Rupert saw this in MySpace, Google saw this in YouTube. What do both of those deals have in common: overvalued, blah, blah, blah. The p/e is horrible. When I was 18, my grandpa forced me to take my only five hundred bucks and buy a stock. Any stock, it was my choice. I didn’t know crap about the market; the biggest punk you ever met. But I went to Macworld a month earlier. There was no such thing as the iPod, and Mike Dell just recommended Steve Jobs close shop. But here were all these dorks walking around with tattoos and crap of Apple. It was crazy, so much life. And the co. had four percent market share. Bought AAPL at 14 bucks. Best decision ever. That’s what we need to find on WallStrip.