Curt Garner, Chipotle’s president and chief technology officer, helped boost the burrito chain’s online sales from just 5% to more than a third of total revenue.
When Curt Garner became Chipotle’s first chief information officer in 2015, he was shocked to learn that a staggering amount of online orders to the Mexican food chain’s 2,000 restaurants were coming from old-school fax machines: a whopping $22.5 million in sales that year.
“You’d go to our website and you’d download a fax form. You’d fill out the form and fax it to the restaurant,” recalled Garner, 56. “If you faxed an order in, you didn’t get a confirmation that it was received and you still had to stand in the line to pay. It was a pretty fragmented thing.”
Fax-based orders represented only .05% of the 1993-founded chain’s total digital sales at the time. But in his quest to digitize Chipotle, Garner soon put a stop to it, starting a campaign to build its online business by architecting a digital transformation with app orders and rewards-based loyalty. In his decade-long tenure, first as CIO and now as president and chief strategy and technology officer, Chipotle’s digital sales have skyrocketed from $225 million in 2015 (only 5% of total $4.5 billion in revenue that year) to nearly $4 billion, topping 35% of 2024’s $11.3 billion in revenue.
Today, Chipotle’s digital business has become what he calls “a multibillion-dollar growth engine,” connecting 3,900 restaurants nationwide and a rewards program with 20 million active users – even at a time when customers are cutting back on spending at fast-casual restaurants. “We’re one of the only public companies that has no debt,” Garner said. “We’ve got a really strong balance sheet, and our growth is enabling us to change the way people eat.”
That track record helped Garner make Forbes’ 2025 CIO Next list, featuring corporate America’s best and brightest chief information and technology officers.
Chipotle’s stock is still down 48% so far this year, and, as the chain struggles from declining traffic, Chipotle’s CEO “ is putting a lot of responsibility” on Garner, said Jeffries managing director Andy Barish, who covers Chipotle. “Curt has been a huge part of the success,” said Barish.
Garner’s been compensated well for all his profit-driving: Garner owns the third-most Chipotle shares of any executive, worth more than $42 million, including $7 million in stock options. His total 2024 compensation topped $16 million in value.
Chipotle’s digital sales are the restaurant’s highest-margin orders. There are 1,100 Chipotle stores that prioritize digital sales in their design, like with a separate pick-up lane called a Chipotlane, and they typically have increased sales, margins and returns, compared to traditional locations that haven’t yet been retrofitted. Over 80% of new company-owned locations will have a Chipotlane.
“I remember the first days when we hit 50,000 orders in a day. We’re now over 500,000,” Garner said. “We just want to give people access to how they want their Chipotle.”
A Columbus, Ohio native, Garner got his start in IT during a tough job market in 1991. Despite a degree in economics from Ohio State, he ended up in a temporary role answering phones for $6 an hour at the IT department of burger chain Wendy’s. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, 10 restaurants were damaged, and Garner volunteered to refurbish the cash registers and computers from those locations.
After getting a few working, Garner drew up a list of the parts the other machines needed, and found a colleague had drawn a cartoon poking fun at him. His boss not only fired the employee on the spot, he gave Garner his full-time job. And it taught Garner a valuable lesson that has stuck with him through four decades in the restaurant industry, he says: “In restaurants, there is no job that is beneath you. You need to be in service of a guest. Don’t be a bystander.”
Garner worked his way up to Wendy’s director of international IT in 1995, and two years later the 28-year-old was recruited to join Starbucks, then a young coffeeshop chain with 1,400 locations. During Garner’s next 17 years there, he digitized the wildly successful business of Starbucks gift cards in 2011 as senior vice president of business technology and, after he was promoted to executive vice president and chief information officer, he launched mobile ordering in 2015.
When he arrived at Chipotle, fax machine orders were the least of the burrito bowl chain’s problems. That year, Chipotle faced a string of foodborne illness outbreaks, with 60 sick and 22 hospitalizations from e.coli, in addition to two norovirus outbreaks and another of salmonella later on. The stock dropped, ending the year 30% down. (And in 2020 Chipotle was fined $25 million to settle criminal charges related to the outbreaks with the Department of Justice.)
But Garner’s plan to transform Chipotle’s digital presence helped get the company out of the hole. He unveiled its app in 2017, and digital sales started picking up – during the app’s first quarter, sales increased 50% year-over-year. The next year, Chipotle’s digital sales reached 10% of total sales, accounting for a half-billion dollars for the first time. In all, some four million people were using Chipotle’s app and website each month, up 65% from 2017.
And then Chipotle launched its rewards program in 2019, which gamified digital ordering (by fun giveaways like offering free avocado sides for a single day) and further drove sales. During Chipotle’s second quarter that year, an overall 13% revenue increase was driven by digital sales soaring 99% year-over-year – accounting for more than Chipotle did in digital sales during all of 2016.
Amid the influx, Garner reworked the technology for the kitchen to not distract staff who are serving in-person customers, developing screens that lit up the ingredients needed for an order in a way that better corresponded with the digital receipts. Garner also developed a way to offer smarter pick-up times. For instance, orders would be sent to locations that had greater capacity, or the pick-up time would be optimized when there was a lull in in-person customers.
Garner is also leading Chipotle’s foray into venture capital through its $100 million fund called Cultivate Next. He’s made eight investments so far, including with two robotics startups, a SaaS platform based on artificial intelligence, a feed additives company, a sustainable oil developer and local food logistics platform Local Line. Through Chipotle’s use of Local Line, Chipotle sourced 47 million pounds of local produce in 2024 and exceeded its annual local sourcing targets two years in a row.
The gamification of Chipotle’s app continues to bring Garner wins. This past summer, the app’s “Summer of Extras” campaign where Chipotle gave out 10,000 burritos (or $1 million worth) had some 6.4 million app users participating. Garner said the campaign drove “a big step up in reactivations of lapsed members” from the summer prior. Its recently launched university rewards program is also off to a strong start, with those opting-in having “higher frequency and stronger engagement, which is driving a meaningful change in spend,” according to Chipotle spokesperson Tyler Benson.
Artificial intelligence will help that gamification get even more personal, too. But so far, Garner has used AI for corporate tasks, specifically within human resources. He recently launched Avo Cado, Chipotle’s AI-powered virtual team member, which he says has doubled job applications while significantly reducing the administrative time it takes to onboard a new hire by 75%.
Still, Garner said his strategy boils down to, “don’t let it be about the technology.”
“Let it be about how it makes people feel, how it makes their day a little bit easier, how it makes people connect in a more meaningful way,” he said.