Economics/Class Relations

The Fast-Food Obsessive Who’s Still Trying to Solve Lunch

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I don’t believe in free will, not really, and one of the reasons why is lunch. I go to a build-your-own-whatever place, I contemplate the nearly infinite combinations of ingredients, I wind up ordering the same damn thing. Millions of Americans eat lunch this way, and one of the foremost people we can thank/blame is Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle. Ells has secretly been working on a vegan, robot-centric new restaurant concept and in recent weeks has shared lots of details about it with Elizabeth G. Dunn — a gifted food writer who would never order as boringly as I do. If you want a preview of the future of lunch, put down your sad desk salad and read.

—Nick Summers, features editor, New York

Steve Ells Is Still Trying to Solve Lunch He built Chipotle and its burrito bowls. Now he’s obsessed with vegan burgers cooked by robots.

Photo: Dina Litovsky
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