It turns out that Chipotle customers were right in their complaints about skimpy portion sizes at some locations. On Wednesday, CEO Brian Niccol disclosed that a company investigation found that 1 in 10 of its restaurants were too meager with their servings.
Chipotle looked into the issue after rumors of shrunken portions circulated on social media, including from influential food reviewers on TikTok who shared images of small helpings. Some customers claimed they got bigger meals when they filmed workers putting their orders together.
The issue came to a head after two years of bruising inflation has made consumers increasingly cost-conscious, with many grousing about surging prices at restaurants. The smaller portions at Chipotle were especially hard to swallow after the restaurant raised prices in recent years, some customers said on social media.
In its initial response to complaints, Chipotle earlier this month told CBS MoneyWatch that it hadn’t changed its portion sizes, but that some meals “may have variability in their size or weight.”
On Wednesday, however, Niccol disclosed that skimpy portions have been a problem at about 10% of its roughly 3,500 locations.
“[W]e’ve always felt the key equity of Chipotle is these generous portion sizes, so we wanted to make sure we’re executing consistently across the system,” he told analysts on an earnings call Wednesday. “And we’ve probably found about 10% or more of restaurants that we really view as outliers that needed to be retrained, re-coached to be executing against what we believe are the right standards.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chipotle-portion-order-size-bowl-ceo-brian-niccol/