Steve Ells Net Worth – $400 million
What is Steve Ells’ net worth? Is Steve Ells married?
Introduction
Steve Ells is the founder and all-around business brain behind the legendary American Restaurant, Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Chipotle is known for being one of the top-performing restaurant chains in the US, and creates fast, delicious tacos and burritos for diners across the United States, UK, Canada, France, and Germany.
Ells took its name from the smoked, dried jalapeno chili pepper popular in Mexican cuisine.
Ells took the company from its humble beginnings with one restaurant in 1993 to a total equity of $1.7 billion and a total assets value of $5 billion by 2019.
The company is known to promote sustainable agriculture and ethical farming practices.
Ells might no longer be the CEO of the giant fast-casual restaurant chain—he stepped down in 2018—or the executive chairman—he stopped that in 2020—but he’ll forever be known as the man behind the plan.
Here’s what else we know about Steve Ells.
The Origin Story
Steve Ells was born on September 12, 1965, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Indianapolis has been a breeding ground for entrepreneurs and the insanely rich, producing John Geisse—the founder of Target—Sid Grauman—the founder of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and home of the Oscars in Hollywood—and Madam C.J. Walker—a pioneering African-American woman who became America’s first-ever female self-made millionaire.
Ells was the son of a pharmaceutical exec and a stay-at-home mom, and he attended Boulder High School after the family relocated to Colorado in his teen years.
From Boulder High School he enrolled at the University of Colorado, where he studied art history.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and serves as an alum of the Delta Chi fraternity.
Ells is not married, but invests significantly in real estate, with multiple properties in Manhattan and the West Village, as well as in Denver.
Life was about to take Ells in a different direction than his art history degree, when he packed up and headed to New York.
He enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, graduating with a whole new set of skills in 1990.
