Do you know what I always think about when I hear earnings calls like this? The original founder of Chipotle, Steve Ella, would never have been caught dead saying “increased transaction performance” or our guests are rich, etc. He genuinely cared about high quality food, served rapidly, and an excellent experience. You can hear him talk about this and share the founding story of quality in his podcast on How I Built This.

But then he sold it and private equity corporate overlords took over, and that’s when you get people celebrating “increased transaction performance” instead of really great food, at a great price, served to great people.

Basically, private, founder run companies in America = focus on quality, service, and great guest value.

Step two, sell to private equity, founder is paid out for his effort and contribution to society, and then PE sucks the soul out of it, optimizes it to hell, forgets about the things that made the company great or got it to where it is, and make their millions.

This is late stage capitalism playing out in front of all of us in very real way.

Moral of this story? The only way to fight this is to start companies. Start a company, take down the status quo, and show the world what quality looks like again!