Chipotle is coming up with innovative ways to improve the customer experience at its restaurants. Now the food chain is testing a new type of grill that is expected to cut wait times in half, shorten the line, and allow customers to get their food faster.

Bernstein senior analyst Danilo Gargiulo says Chipotle (CMG) is "extremely prudent about making sure that the operations for their employees and the customer satisfaction is extremely high, across the entire system."

"There is a huge potential for Chipotle to increase the throughput to increase the speed of service of people who are waiting in line... having a grill that can help speed up the process... is really going to help the customer have what they want when they want it."

Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung also spoke to Yahoo Finance about the new grill system, explaining the improvements will not only cook their meat quickly, but it will also make the food taste better.

"It means it's going to be juicier because it's going to be cooked to the exact right temperature, and we are not going to have the yield loss, which means our economic model and our ability to continue to deliver value to our customers is going to be better than ever."

Video Transcript

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DANILO GARGIULO: Chipotle is operating their own stores. And they want to be extremely prudent about making sure that the operations for their employees and the customer satisfaction is extremely high across their entire system. They start in the lab, really. They move on into a single store. Then they roll it out into 10 or more stores. And then eventually, it gets rolled out nationally.

One of the things that they are investing in is this new grill system. The current grill is one-sided. So you have to put the chicken on the grill. You have to let it stay for about 6 minutes each side, and then you have to flip it. So in total, it takes about 12 to 13 minutes to grill the chicken the Chipotle way. This new grill is going to be kind of a double-sided. So it's going to take half as much just because it's already kind of cooking from two sides.

But on top of it is also, like, faster grilling times. So in total, instead of taking 12 to 15 minutes of cooking, it's going to take only two to three minutes. So there is a huge potential for Chipotle to increase the speed of service of people who are waiting in line. So having a grill that can help you really speed up the process and cook the chicken in only, like, two to three minutes is really going to help the customer have what they want, when they want it.

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