Vegan Food and Robots Failed: Now, the Chipotle Founder Is On to Counter Service

Counter Service — a name that feels vaguely like a search term, much like Diner 24 NYC or Thai Food Near Me — has been selling stacked sandwiches since the beginning of the year, mostly by delivery.

Head toward 54 West 14th Street near Sixth Avenue during a weekday lunch hour you’ll see a worker preparing food on what looks like a stage through the window. The menu on the wall lists a collection of sandwiches: a banh mi made with liver pate; roast beef with cheddar, horseradish, and watercress; roast pork with broccoli rabe, provolone, and salsa verde; a fried egg sandwich; a green goddess chicken club. It’s a fairly standard sandwich selection — one most early customers wouldn’t have guessed is the new spot from the creator of Chipotle.

Going from Kernel to Counter Service has been a humbling and expensive pivot. This space had been Ells’s central kitchen for Kernel, the place that launched vegan in 2024 with a mission — and $36 million in fundraising. The goals of Kernel were to streamline its fast-casual kitchens with fresh ingredients, a robot arm, and automation, which translated to, he says, fewer workers paid more, with benefits. That robot arm and an app were keys to the launch, as the arm made up to 1000 individual items a day.

Before it shuttered, Kernel introduced chicken sandwiches — to no avail. Then last month, the New York Times reported, “Kernel … discovered the hard way that the robot revolution has hiccups to smooth out.”

In addition, “Veganism,” said Ells in an interview with Eater, “is very polarizing, I’ve learned.”

On a smaller scale, other robot spots have also struggled in New York, like Greenpoint’s robot barista cafe, though not with the same mega funding as Ells had. It seems people still want a human element in even a fast-casual experience.

Even though Ells scrapped Kernel (and that robot arm), his driving question remains the same in Counter Service: “How do we make a restaurant more efficient?” Yet the context of his starting a new brand comes with more pressure. When Ells started Chipotle over 30 years ago in Denver in 1993, he said “I didn’t understand I was reinventing the fast-casual restaurant.” Today, his spot isn’t just about a sandwich shop as a result. Rather it’s coming up with a model that addresses the efficiency question in ways that resonate with diners — while using better quality ingredients than those used in traditional fast-food restaurants; and less labor that’s paid more — while minimizing waste.

Ells landed on sandwiches based on what he claims is a hole in the market: It’s about “Sandwiches, mostly,” reads the website. Those sandwiches are designed by Andrew Black, former chef at Eleven Madison Park, who was also behind the menu at Kernel. They’re baking their own bread. They’re roasting their own meats. They’re making house sauces.

Maybe this isn’t all that different from Court Street Grocers, Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market, or the Meat Hook Sandwich shop that’s now part of the butcher shop, where there’s a “higher sandwich intelligence” at work, in part due to seasonings and sauces as well as the meats. But unlike those New York standalone locations that also cook meats in-house and source bread without fillers, these are $9 to $22 sandwiches with Chipotle-sized aspirations.

“If I look across the sandwich landscape,” he cites Jimmy Johns, Subway, Quiznos, Potbelly, Jersey Mike’s, or Blimpie — “People love those brands. This is something different.”

Take the $16 Cortese, which starts with a light and crisp roll layered with thin-sliced pork loin. It’s paired broccoli rabe with roasted garlic and chile flakes, along with provolone for the salty creamy factor. Then, it’s finished with salsa verde. Making sandwiches with quality ingredients on a local level is relatively straightforward. Across locations nationwide? That’s the harder part.

Melissa McCart/Eater NY

At the start, just like Kernel, there are three employees per store. Following the 14th Street location, now open, the former Kernel location at 315 Park Avenue South at East 24th Street will roll out following a redesign, as well as the one at 15 East Fourth Street at Lafayette. A third one on the Upper East Side is also in the works at 1302 First Avenue at East 70th Street, all of which are slated to open in the next couple of months. And also like Kernel, Counter Service is focused on lunch.

Counter Service