Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT), Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG): How Should You Play It?

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG), on the other hand, has been delivering outstanding growth rates over the last years thanks to the popularity of its “food with integrity” approach to Mexican cuisine, offering higher quality food and better ecological and sustainability standards than traditional fast food chains.

The company has done the opposite of its competitors: while other fast food companies move into highly processed ingredients as they grow in size, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) has been focusing every day more on fresh ingredients for its tacos and burritos. Instead of looking for low cost suppliers, Chipotle has developed its own network of high quality providers of natural and environmentally sustainable food.

This means higher prices and a more complex operation for Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) versus other alternatives, but customers seem to be willing to pay a few extra bucks for the superior quality that the company has to offer. Chipotle has been expanding its sales at more than 20% annually over the last five years, even if there is some kind of slowdown in the middle term, the company still has plenty of room for expansion in the US, and international markets are practically untapped, so Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) has many years of healthy growth ahead of it.

Bottom line

What´s positive for employees, suppliers, customers, and the society as a whole is in many cases a good thing for shareholders too. It´s not ethical versus profitable anymore, investors can choose to invest in companies making plenty of money while at the same time doing the right thing.

The article Socially Responsible Investing: Ethical and Very Profitable originally appeared on Fool.com.

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