Wells Fargo analysts ordered 75 identical burrito bowls from 8 different Chipotles and found that portion sizes varied wildly. The biggest bowl was almost 2x heavier than the smallest. Wild that they don’t standardize this from a cost perspective.
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I bet they do factor it into the cost by assuming the largest possible order every time and building that into the price. So anyone that serves less than that it’s just gravy. (Uh, maybe a weird metaphor in this context I guess.)
For some reason, I just love that it was Wells Fargo who instigated this.
Came here to say the same thing. I wonder how long before anyone discovers that all those Chipotle workers now have Wells Fargo savings accounts and were signed up for credit cards.
But did they control for whether some of the Wells Fargo testers were particularly adept at giving "the look"?! (https://fortune.com/2024/05/30/chipotle-ceo-brian-niccol-portion-sizes-special-look/)
This reminds me of my long-standing, but unproven, theory of midtown NYC delis. If you order your sandwich in Spanish it will be bigger and better than if you do so in English. I bet the same would be true at Chipotle.
Way to expense your lunch for a month.
I worked at Qdoba (similar to Chipotle) for fifteen months awhile ago. We were supposed to practice portion sizing every week (spoon into a clean line pan, weigh it, and dump it back). No one ever did this because, well, not a great job and we weren't paid well. Being a jerk as a customer was a good way to get the "correctly" sized portions.
Most of the time our location was so busy that filling tortillas and bowls fast enough was the problem. And I'm sure over-portioning is priced in to some degree. Mainly it gives the company another avenue to fire workers at any time.
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