Chipotle Mexican Grill on Tuesday announced a pair of investments in a Mediterranean fast-casual sandwich concept out of Ohio and an AI-based supply chain platform out of Australia.
The supply chain platform is called Lumachain and is based in Sydney. The restaurant chain is called Brassica. It was founded in 2015 and has six locations and is based in Columbus, Ohio.
The Newport Beach, California-based Chipotle made the investments through its $100 million Cultivate Next venture fund. The fund makes early-stage investments into companies that align with the company’s mission to “cultivate a better world” and accelerate its long-term growth plans.
Lumachain is a minority, female-founded company that developed a program that tracks in real time the origin, location and condition of individual items in a supply chain, from farm to table. The program is designed to reduce waste and increase efficiency and comes along with a Computer Vision AI platform that monitors operations inside food production plants.
“The visibility in real time and quality data analytics that Lumachain’s software provides could optimize the management and quality of perishable goods for the foodservice industry,” Curt Garner, chief customer and technology officer for Chipotle, said in a statement.
Brassica offers custom-made Mediterranean sandwiches and salads.
Brassica, meanwhile, enables customers to customize their sandwiches and salads. The chain’s signature items feature house-made falafel, baked-to-order organic pita, meats, vegetables, seasoned fries, vegan tahini, chocolate chip cookies and minty pink lemonade.
The investment comes at a time in which emerging chains have struggled to find financing. Chipotle’s own track record investing in or developing other concepts has not been great, but the company in its announcement said its funding will help Brassica expand in new markets.
The investment “is consistent with our mission to cultivate a better world,” Nate Lawton, chief development officer for Chipotle, said in a statement.
But it is also the first restaurant concept to receive an investment through Cultivate Next. Chipotle has invested in a handful of companies. Those companies typically feature software, such as the local food commerce program Local Line or the automation company Vebu. Chipotle has also invested in an organic fertilizer company, Nitricity, and a cleaner cooking oil company Zero Acre.
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