Chipotle’s new CEO is bringing back a missing ingredient to hit the chain’s next goal—raising annual sales per store to $4 million

When Scott Boatwright joined Chipotle Mexican Grill as chief operating officer eight years ago, he worked closely with the burrito chain’s founder, Steve Ells. Chipotle was laser-focused on operations at the time, as it looked to rebuild sales after a safety crisis a couple of years earlier. But Boatwright felt that there was one ingredient missing: an extra touch of hospitality.

As Boatwright, CEO since last November, recalls it, Ells told him that Chipotle didn’t need to be friendly, it just needed to be fast. That’s changing now that Boatwright is in charge. And friendlier service is a key prong in his plan to leave his mark on a quick-service chain.

“Our team members got so focused on creating the experience efficiently that they can just forget to smile,” Boatwtright tells Fortune in a recent interview at Chipotle headquarters in Newport Beach, Calif. That doesn’t mean an in-depth exchange about how your kids are doing in school, he hastens to add. But it does mean basic greetings and questions like “What can I make fresh for you today?” or phrases like “Thank you for spending your hard-earned money at Chipotle,” which Boatwright says do not slow employees down, but rather add a more welcoming vibe to what is after all a hospitality business.

(His predecessor and former boss Brian Niccol, who decamped for Starbucks last year after a highly successful six-year stint at Chipotle, is doing something similar at the coffee-shop chain, instructing baristas to leave short personal notes on cups. But the trick, Boatwright cautions, for such touches to work is for them not to feel “forced.”)

“We’re all fighting for market share, we’re all fighting for dollars,” he says. And that means the right-brain skills of making customers feel welcome have to be deployed along with the left-brain skills needed for best-in-class operations.

That’s all the more important given that Chipotle’s plan to grow includes more international expansion, notably its bold bet on Mexico, going deeper into smaller U.S. cities and trying to get more business from each of its 3,500 existing restaurants. In the 10 months since he took the reins, initially on an interim basis, Chipotle shares have barely budged, reflecint a “wait-and-see” attitude on Wall Street.

On the same day Boatwright told Wall Street investors about the smile-more campaign, Chipotle announced its plan to work with a partner to open restaurants in Mexico, the spiritual home of the burritos and quesadillas it sells. The news raised eyebrows, given that Taco Bell’s attempts to conquer Mexico a few years ago flopped. Analyst Antonio Hernandez at Actinver Research wrote in a research note that “familiarity with its ingredients does not necessarily predict success,” according to Reuters.