This episode features an interview with Zach Sippl, Senior Director of Data and Business Intelligence at Chipotle. In this episode, Zach talks about the evolution of the restaurant industry throughout the pandemic, how to create accessible data, the secrets to successful leadership, and much more.
This episode features an interview with Zach Sippl, Senior Director of Data and Business Intelligence at Chipotle. In this episode, Zach talks about the evolution of the restaurant industry throughout the pandemic, how to create accessible data, the secrets to successful leadership, and much more.
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[00:00:00] Steve Hamm: Zach. It's great to have you on the podcast today. Welcome. Okay,
Zach Sippl: Thanks, Steve. Great to be here.
Steve Hamm: good. Hey, would you please start by describing Chipotle's business, kind of in all of its dimensions and also a bit about the competitive landscape?
Zach Sippl: Yeah. Yeah. You bet, You know, most people know Chipotle of, you know, as a fast casual restaurant. Serves super tasty burritos and tacos, which is very true. You know, we have 2,800 restaurants across the U.S., Canada and Europe. There's a lot of other stuff about Chipotle that people may not know. That I think makes it extremely special. And part of that is we serve responsibly sourced, real food, wholesome ingredients, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, preservatives. And it is super awesome to watch it all come together in action when we use the different classical cooking techniques, you know, we cut our own vegetables and squash and avocados, fry our own chips, grilling all the meats. It is awesome to watch. And, uh, you know, sustainability of [00:01:00] our world's a real thing for us. And we we've always focused on what our impacts are to the world and the progress we make towards, um, minimizing that then any negative impacts and our goals and focuses on cultivating a better world. And I would say lastly, you know, aligned to our talk today, like digital technology and innovation is it's not just a component of Chipotle. It is a core component of Chipotle and it is a big focus, and including digital, uh, space around analytics and data as well. Uh, And you know, competitive landscape for fast casual has evolved a lot during the COVID time. You know, as people have sheltered in place, their options became more limited. They started to explore new ways of ordering from restaurants, including different digital access points and delivery marketplaces. And COVID really caused different trial and experimentation for folks. And if you give people a great, easy experience, like I think Chipotle has done, uh, people come back and, and [00:02:00] that's what we're seeing right now, whether it's the digital side or coming to the restaurants. And I'm pretty sure other people are seeing the same thing right now.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, it's a beautiful thing right now, just in our town, driving around, walking around, bicycling, the restaurants are full of people. The bars are full of young people. I mean, it really feels like the old days. It's kind of. It's kind of exciting and fun. So, um, you know, you, you've talked a little bit about COVID and, and, uh, what's happened with kind of the shift that's gone on here. I want you to drill down a little bit more. I know that the company has fared actually well during the COVID-19 crisis. Huge surge in digital sales, opening well, more than a hundred new restaurants last year. It seems like the company's leaders decided to continue a strong focus on digital in the crisis and it really paid off. So, So give us some of the detail on the decision they made and, and how they kind of operationalized it [00:03:00] and how they executed it.
Zach Sippl: Yeah. Yeah. You bet. Steve At Chipotle is looked at as a digital leader in our space, and we had strong performance last year due to our digital focus of course, but also a ton of investment in our employees as well. Um, End of Q1 or our digital sales grew 133 plus percent, accounted for half of our sales. Uh, Pretty awesome. And Chipotle has been and continues to invest in technology, making sure we have, have our place in the future of this, this food service world. And that include things like Chipotlanes which I'll tell you what that's about in a sec. Uh, Alternative food formats or sorry, store formats, our rewards program, which is doing really great, uh, digital only menu items. And we spend a ton of time making sure the app and the website is the very best digital customer experience it can be. And like Chipotlanes, it's our, what we consider the digital drive through of the future, where you have drive through service for customers who place [00:04:00] orders directly through our app. That's a big focus for us. We, We opened 40 new restaurants in Q1, 26 of those had Chipotlanes. And from an alternative store formats, we opened our first ever digital only restaurant in New York last year. So exciting to see how that's going. Um, And our rewards program, big focus for us, amazing success there and engagement with our customers. We now have over 21 million members in our program, uh, and it, it is a key enabler for us to continue our digital flywheel and optimize the important customer data set we have, um, for how we engage with it, with our customers out there. Uh, let's say w go ahead, Steve.
Steve Hamm: No, the Chipotlanes, is that something that emerged just out of COVID or, oh, you already had it on the, on the drawing boards and it just was very timely? Okay.
Zach Sippl: Great question. Great question. Yeah, we've had them there prior to COVID, but they really became a whole different level of excitement for, for customers uh, as an access point, knowing they wanted to have that limited interaction as much impossible, and didn't even [00:05:00] have to get out of their car, uh, to enjoy Chipotle.
Steve Hamm: Okay, good. Now the deliveries through partners, is that something that CA is brand new with, with COVID or did you have that already beforehand?
Zach Sippl: We had started down our partnership uh, prior to that, but we went further to make sure that the customers had in the majority of their, their marketplace partners, that they've, they've always enjoyed, uh, available with Chipotle. Yeah, there
Steve Hamm: cool. Now I'm interrupted you a minute ago. So did you have another thought?
Zach Sippl: no problem. See, you have a lot of exciting stuff going on.
Uh, You know, one other piece that we recently announced was our investment in Nuro. Which is a, a, a, it's pretty cool. It's a service that, that operates a fleet of the self-driving robotic vehicles for food delivery. Um, And for us, you know, we're always looking for different opportunities that provide innovative solutions to, to get a better access and convenience for folks. And I think Nuro yeah, definitely could be one of them.
Steve Hamm: Any thoughts of delivering, uh, uh, tacos with drones?
Zach Sippl: So good question. Uh, Nothing right now, but, um, you know, we'll, we'll see where it comes from the future.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. I think that would be a real possibility. I mean, they're relatively light, you know? And, uh, if they fell on somebody's head, you know, they wouldn't really be injured or anything like that.
Zach Sippl: Yeah, well, we, I will say the one thing that that really has worked out great for us is our, uh, our food travels real nice, uh, with delivery.
Steve Hamm: no, That's great. Hey, let's get into your role with, with Chipotle. What's the most important strategy or product that you're working on right now?
Zach Sippl: Yeah, So I'm the head of data [00:07:00] and business intelligence at Chipotle. Um, And the big thing we work on, uh, and we're working on specifically right now is, is really more data, more accessibility, more timely, um, access for folks across the company. And that means a couple of things. You know, we, We need more data for, um, understanding what's going on out there. And that includes a recent implementation of a customer data platform to give us a real full 360 view of our customer. And always as they interact with our brand, uh, using both first party as well as third party data. Uh, Huge unlock for us, uh, as well as investing in more accessible, um, ways to get at the data, which includes better analytics self-service capabilities. I'm To ensure all folks across the company can get access to the data they need. And another part is the timely, reliable, uh, data across the company. And that's us moving into more modern architecture, getting into more near real-time data capabilities, all really exciting stuff [00:08:00] for us.
Steve Hamm: You've worked for a variety of companies in your career. I've, I've seen on your LinkedIn profile, retailing, financial services, IT consulting, another restaurant industry. What are the most important management and leaderships lessons that you've learned along the way that you're applying now at Chipotle?
Zach Sippl: yeah. Good question. Steve Definitely have learned a few things over the years. Uh, you know, A couple of the big ones that come to mind. I think the first one is embracing change. A lot of changes that happened over the years, especially recently. Um, As a leader, you know, it's really not about avoiding change. It's about driving it. It's about embracing it. Especially in the data analytics space. When, When change happens, you have to think about what does this mean for our processes? What does this mean for our KPIs and how we should be measuring our success? How do we think about our models and ensuring that we know what's going to happen in the future with the right predictive, uh, capabilities? You gotta stay on your toes with [00:09:00] these things, uh, as change happens. Another thing is just around being authentic. You know, Over time as I was growing in different leadership roles, I tried to think about what my persona should be. And, you know what I learned through that, that experience is, it's not about creating a leadership persona. It's just being who you are and what persona you really are. And not trying to be something or someone you're not. And, you know, leaders can be uh, you know, introverts extroverts. They can be funny. Maybe they're not funny, Steve, but they're. just be who you are and, uh, that's how you win the respect of people out there. You Being authentic and being the best, be the best person you can be. Um, And I don't think you regret it. And I think the last thing I'll say is just seeking out advice. You know, you're, You're never gonna know everything and that's okay. And just knowing what you do now, knowing what you don't know, and finding good advice out there, and you find those folks that are really gonna tell you the way it is and give you the advice you need to hear. And those people can give you insight, insightful points about those blind spots that [00:10:00] you're not seeing, and that aren't going to be a part of your everyday know decision-making processes. And, uh, you know, Find those folks, find the people that are going to tell you how it really is.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, I think that advice is, is really good for any leader kind of at any level in any industry. Very sound. And you sounded comfortable in your S in yourself. So, uh, I guess it's working for you. Hey, um, I want to switch gears now. Let's talk about the data cloud. When and why did Chipotle began to move data to the cloud in a big way? And what's the status of that evolution at this point?
Zach Sippl: Yeah, that's a great question, Steve, you know, A few years back, uh, we realized we needed to move off of some of our on-prem world and really get to the cloud. And that was for a couple of reasons. The data hunger was becoming real. You know, People were looking for more and more insights, uh, to make the right decisions across the company. And we were evolving a lot and we had to assure the right performance was there for the data they needed. Ensuring stability was there. Um, We had [00:11:00] more customers, more transactions we'd ever had, and that means more data. And the scalability. You know, we, We were getting hit with infrastructure challenges all the time. And, uh, when we moved to the cloud, we could really with a click of a button, get to a much better spot quickly. So that was a big reason why, why we started and um, you know, we've evolved a lot, even since that, that starting point. You know, 2019, we started moving to more modern architecture. We knew that, you know, our, our rewards program was thriving. We had to get the right customer data behind it. And we wanted to go further with near real-time capabilities. Uh, And part of that is getting to a modern architecture. So we've been driving towards that and making sure right now, like our most important data's on modern architecture data analytics with our data scientists, always using our modern architecture with the right cloud components. Customer platforms they're near real-time capabilities are starting to happen. All really good stuff.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. It's amazing to think, I mean, this is just a couple of years with [00:12:00] all this progress. You know, when we were talking to a guy from another company today on the podcast, who talked about, you know, the COVID crisis and how it brought, you know, it stressed the company in so many ways, but it accelerated a lot of the changes that people are already had had in their minds. It was just like, oh, we don't have to wait two years for this. Let's do it now. Have you seen that kind of thing in Chipotle?
Zach Sippl: No doubt, Steve. No doubt. We, uh, We could have never imagined we'd be at half of our digital transactions right now. Um, Or half our transactions are digital. That That came extremely quickly. And we're seeing people stick, um, with the digital space too, which shows their excitement for the additional access points. Um, well, you know, We're seeing that in a lot of different ways in how we collaborate as a company and, uh, how we just think differently about our. our collaboration tools across the boards and how we use data because we have to use it differently and we have to engage differently across our different groups, uh, in all all areas of the company.
Steve Hamm: Now this transition, I'm sure it's not without its [00:13:00] challenges. If you could talk about some of the challenges you've faced as Chipotle moved data to the cloud in a big way and how you overcame them. I think that'd be really helpful for people.
Zach Sippl: Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Um, A couple of the big things that we had to stay focused on with moving to the cloud, the first one is around security and compliance. When you're moving to new architecture, you have to take it seriously. And you have to have a focus on it. It's definitely not going to be the most, most, uh, you know, sexy of things, but, uh, it's about as important as it gets, especially when you're in a retail or restaurant space with a lot of customer, a lot of, a lot of data that you have to be very cautious with. So keeping close collaboration with your partners, as well as your internal security folks is extremely key. The, The other piece for us is around, uh, technical debt and, uh, legacy systems and, and solutions. Everybody gets excited when we talk about modern architecture and moving on to the, the shiny new things. No one wants to talk about, um, the old stuff and what to [00:14:00] do with it, and the time it takes to retire it or migrate it. But that's just as important, uh, in my mind to make sure when you get done and you have this amazing new platform, amazing new, modern architecture, that you have, you don't have duplicative platform support. You don't have multiple sources of truth and you don't go backwards rather than forwards. So ensuring people, people are understanding and you get the support and you make it part of your initiatives, part of your strategy, so it's not forgotten. And you end up in the right spot.
Steve Hamm: So if, if the migration of data to the cloud is kind of like, uh, a journey, where are you in the journey? I mean, is it still at the beginning, in the middle, or have you done a massive shift?
Zach Sippl: yeah. It's um, Data analytics I think one of the more exciting things is, you'll probably never think you're, you're done, um, because things move so fast and your business changes so fast. Um, But we definitely have taken up some good steps, um, as we've gone forward, especially with, uh, with snowflake as well.
[00:15:00] Steve Hamm: Yeah, I wanted to get into that next. Um, When and why did Chipotle begin using Snowflake's technology? Okay.
Zach Sippl: Yeah. We started in the uh, beginning of 2020, after a very thorough evaluation, a lot of different, uh, data platforms, uh, ended up thinking Snowflake's the right one for us. And the main use case we started with was our, having the data behind our customer data platform that we implemented that was, uh, really the backbone for our rewards program and the customer data associated with it. Uh, And we did this for a couple of reasons. One, uh, administrative ease. I mean, it is a fraction of an effort to manage and administer a Snowflake compared to some of our our prior platforms, uh, which is so great uh, for, uh, for our teams. And the, the scalability, you know, the, the elastic nature of the cloud world with snowflake really allows you to, you know, if you want to load data faster, you want to run higher volumes or queries, you want to scale up your warehouses, you can take advantage of that. [00:16:00] Uh, And then when you're done, you can scale down. And the only pay for what you need, when you need it. Uh, So that that scalability at a click of a button at your fingertip is, is awesome. And, you know, aligned to that as the performance and speed. We have a million different use cases for how we need to need data across the company. And we have to be able to customize what we need for those experiences. So whether you're, you know, it's an operational reporting need or it's our data sciences go uh extremely deep with the data, we have to be able to have the right way to solve for those things so that we, we get the right, um, right experience for every single case. And Snowflake's really allows us to, to address all those different, different situations with this unique architecture.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. So you, like, You talked about having a lot of different use cases. Let's drill down a bit here. If you could, please walk us through a couple of the most important uses you're making of Snowflake's data cloud and the benefits you're getting from them.
Zach Sippl: Yeah, you bet. You know, The one that you probably expect, uh, our biggest use [00:17:00] of snowflake is just as a data warehouse solution. Uh, And we always use it for the most important data and the largest sets of data we have. Such as customer data, sales data, those kinds of things. The other piece is around analytics. It's our go-to platform uh, for all of our data science community across the company. Uh, Really helps on the speed to market for insights, uh, with the scalable warehouse model. And it, it answers the high horsepower data needs of these data scientists. And it takes very little effort to make sure that's available. And, uh, we also put a big shoulder into the data sharing capabilities because we have a lot of partners internally and externally, um, that we need data from and they need data from us.
Steve Hamm: Now, is that mainly your delivery partners or are there, are you, do you really have kind of the whole network upstream and downstream hooked into your data and sharing data with you?
Zach Sippl: Yeah. It's a wide variety. You know, It could be yeah. any, any types of partners we have um, for any needs across all of our different [00:18:00] business areas. You know, For us, we're not too concerned of, uh, of, uh, who they are, what share of the company, you know, data's data to us. And if we have an easy way to share it, we're going to take advantage of that.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. So is this something that you're just beginning or are you, I mean, is there a lot more to be done with data sharing? What kind of, What's your vision of what the future will look like?
Zach Sippl: Yeah, w we have, There's no doubt we want to go further, uh, with data sharing and Snowflake at Chipotle. You know, At the end of the day, for us, it's a code free integration, you know, in both directions, how we can get data from people and how they receive data from us. Um, It really does reduce the data integration development time from weeks to hours for us. And we use it extensively already today for a number of internal and external partners. Um, And I would say Steven, you know, between data share and the direct access of third-party data in the Snowflake marketplace, we are saving extensive time and dollars along with adding so much convenience, uh, when people don't need to wait for us to create integration. And they [00:19:00] can really get access to the data as soon as they need it, which is so important these days.
And the, the advice I've given to Snowflake, a couple of different things, and really it comes down to how we get to one beautiful, fully together data world. And one is building out this marketplace, continue to build it out with the most relevant data. Um, I think of it like the, you know, the Door Dash, the Uber Eats for data. You, If you get to that, one-stop shop for all your data needs, man, that's where we go. And, uh, the ease to get to it it is awesome. So the more relevant data, um, the more we're going to use it. And, um, the other thing I'll give her advice on is just the data share perspective. It's a two-way street between you and your partners, whether that's people internally or externally and [00:21:00] building the excitement about data share. And allows us, you know, allows Chipotle to take advantage of with more and more partners. Like we need to get everybody on that page. So data share becomes real everywhere we go.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, Let's look into the future a little bit. Now, what are the major trends in data technology you expect to see emerging over the next year or so?
Zach Sippl: Yeah, Steve, that's a good question. You know, I really think about it, um, in a lot of how people are organizing themselves and how they're thinking of data. Uh, I talk about it as, uh, a one team, one dream analytics. And if you think of what's happening, COVID is organizations. They had to pivot, they had to get insights quickly. Like what is going on in this world? What are we going to do in our organization based on what's happening. And you can't do that in silos, you have to really be able to uh, work as an entire company to figure this stuff out. And, And that's why I think what you're going to see, especially in this next year, uh, is these anywhere you'd had centrally organized analytic groups in a company, anywhere you had [00:22:00] fully decentralized, you're going to see more of a hybrid model continue to form. And that means you have local domain experts and leaders, but you also have the centralized expertise on the analytics and the governance. So these new modern analytics, self service tools and the citizen developer data science platforms, allowing more hybrid models to be possible and to be really successful. So I think you're going to allow, you know, you're going to see these models allow the data insights become a really a shared asset aligning and focused on business results and breaking down these silos that happen at companies. I think you're going to see a lot more of that.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Hey, um, let's look a little further, I mean, five years or more, put it on your visionary cap. How do you expect the data cloud, uh, data management, data analytics, uh, you know, the, the, the coming technologies, to impact business and, and even society?
Zach Sippl: Yeah, it's a great question. Steve Man, things change so fast these days. It's hard to know, but what I will tell you is I think it's going [00:23:00] to be just everything connected. Fully connected data, everything. All silos removed, all data together, people data, customer data, sales data, you name it, all fully connected and bringing it all together to create like super smart relationships, what it all means across it all. And allowing, you know, business folks who don't have, aren't going to be crazy deep in the code to be able to really explore it. So you, you've probably heard of, you know, maybe a concept of a data fabric and that's just the idea uh, data management architecture that that brings all of these disparate data sources together in one beautiful place. It's a fairly simple concept when you think about it. But, uh, it's how you take that. And you connect it and you connect it using, uh, what's called these days, it's like a knowledge graph. And it connects all these siloed datas and they use different things like machine learning and things, and creates the right relationships and really simplifies what's going on. And so that knowledge graph sits on top of these data solutions, [00:24:00] um, and allows you to look at all the data together at scale, any kind of data. And it connects it all, uh, with the right flexibility, linking, you know, millions of billions of billions of data points across the business. And the key to all of that is not just about, okay, cool, it's connected. But you have to take that complicated data and make it easy to understand. It, Establishing that semantic businessy type layer of business definitions and things right on top of it that usually can be cryptic and highly technical. And now all of a sudden you have all the data connected in a super smart way that people can really use. And it's endless what you can do when you understand how the world's connected that way. So I think that's where we're going to go. Just, you know, Just like how I talked about earlier with organizationally, we're all going to be connected. Uh, And the data's how we connect. And Just one beautiful data dream.
Steve Hamm: Right. All right. Hey, You used the term data fabric and I've heard other people talk about data mesh these days. Are those the same thing or is there, is there a difference?
[00:25:00] Zach Sippl: I think of them as the same thing. I'm sure. Uh, there's Things are changing a lot these days, Steve, but, um, yeah, I think of them as the same thing.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, It sounds like high con high concept. They've got to be the same thing. Oh, that sounds, that sounds great. Hey, um, you know, we, we usually finish off these podcasts by asking some personal kind of fun question. And, uh, I hear that you eat a lot of Chipotle, that you're, you know, you're a customer as well. So what's your go-to order.
Zach Sippl: Yeah, I, uh, I will tell you, Steve. I am. I was a super fan before I joined Chipotle. I am still a super fan and I eat Chipotle about five times a week. I, I absolutely love it. And, um, my go-to right now, it's, uh, our whole 30 lifestyle bowl, which is, uh, is I usually will get it with chicken. I get cauliflower rice. And then, I don't know, maybe once a week, I throw in a, a barbacoa quesadilla into the mix as well. You know, though. The quesadillas and the cauliflower rice, we just brought out this year. So they're, uh, they're my current favorites that we launched and, um, they're super great. I love it.
Steve Hamm: You're making me hungry, man. No, that sounds good. Hey, this has [00:26:00] been a wonderful conversation. Really enjoyed talking to you and I love your vision of one team and one dream. This whole idea of all that data being available, no silos, democratization of data with the, or within the organization, so that it's not just data scientists getting their hands on it. It's everybody on the business side, too. And I, I think that's a great promise that a lot of companies in Chipotle are really starting to deliver on. And I think that's, It'll be very interesting to watch where you guys go next. So thank you so much for your time.
Zach Sippl: Thanks, Steve. Appreciate you having me.