Leave it to a Wells Fargo restaurant analyst to decisively settle the Chipotle burrito “weight debate.” An employee prepares a burrito bowl at a Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2019.
On TikTok, some customers accused Chipotle of skimping on food portions. They started a trend of filming Chipotle employees as the workers built out their burritos order with chicken, guacamole and other add-ons in an effort to get larger scoops. The trend, dubbed the “Chipotle phone method,” went viral on social media, and some employees pushed back on it , saying customers filming them was “stressful and dehumanizing.
” Chipotle’s CEO eventually addressed the issue. “The portions have not gotten smaller,” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol recently told Fortune . “We always want to give people big portions that get them excited about the food.
” He said that if customers want a little more rice or another topping, they can ask an employee. So Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem went out to Chipotle to do some investigative work. Fadem and his team ordered and weighed 75 burrito bowls with white rice, black beans, chicken, pico de gallo, cheese and lettuce across 8 Chipotle locations in New York City.
(They brought them back to the office for other Wells Fargo employees’ lunch.) The analysts found that the consistency of the portions varied widely. Chipotle analyst Zachary Fadem bought and weighed 75 Chipotle burrito bowls in New York City.
The bowls.
