Are Chipotle portions really shrinking like complaining customers say? An expert weighs in
He’s spilling the beans.
Chipotle is taking all kinds of heat these days, but judging by the size of the complaining chorus, the biggest beef customers appear to have with the trendy fast casual is shrinking portions — all while prices rise higher than ever.
Now, a New York City-based Wells Fargo analyst has actually studied the phenomenon, ordering a total of 75 burrito bowls at multiple local locations to see if the salsa slinger was really skimping.
Using weigh-ins as the primary data mode, Zachary Fadem scaled the samples of the Big Apple corporate “bro” favorite lunch and found some great variety in the results, according to Barron’s.
The average weighted bowl came in at about 21.5 ounces, but some skewed as light at 13.8 ounces.
The heaviest he observed was 26.8 ounces.
“At the median, in-store orders and digital orders were very similar (within ~0.2 oz),” he noted in his data.
“That said, consistency varied widely,” Fadem added, stating that the heaviest bowl outdid the lightest by 87%.
In response to his data chart shared on X, one user wrote “There needs to be a conference for this kind of “pedestrian” research that actually impacts people’s lives.”
In May, Chipotle brass doubled down that portion sizes had not actually changed despite rumors.
