I feel like I’m trying to rationalize insanity, and I do understand the reason, but why does the burrito company need stock?
Money
The stock holders are the owners. The owners can in theory direct the board of people representing their interests to do whatever, but generally stock owners want the board to do things they believe will make the value of the stock go up. Like any average owner of a private company, just we all get to watch since it’s a public company.
Remember the $1 grilled cheese truck guy?
https://www.distractify.com/p/one-dollar-grilled-cheese-truck
It didn’t ever actually happen (that I know of) but those trucks should exist everywhere and park right next to overpriced fast food restaurants to exert some economic pressure on them to lower their prices. Shit is ridiculous.
Yeah, what we got instead was a place selling lobster rolls for $23 a pop.
I am with you, there should be (a place selling dollar cheesies), but the fact that there isn’t is telling about how unfeasible that is.
Middle age people with jobs also can’t afford Chipotle in the PedoEconomy.
Chipotle has been shit ever since their data breach years ago. Fuck 'em.
I live twenty minutes from a Qdoba and they have yet to fuck up my order or skimp on toppings.
The Qdoba near me is garbage at folding burritos, and I’ve rarely seen anyone else in there. I wonder if it’s a money laundering front. Still better than Chipotle 😅
Man, I am crushed by how badly my local Qdoba prepares their proteins. It’s not like that at other Qdobas.
It wasn’t the multiple ecoli scares?
Do you boycott every company thats had a breach?
Only after they fuck up my order nearly half a dozen times with a drastic reduction in quality AND quantity.
Yes.
Yes I do.
Fuck, the chipotle skimping was such a load of bullshit.
Glad I don’t go there, or any restaurant, any more.
This must be the end of the monopoly game. I guess we either flip the board or die
Nah, we set up some pillars across the board and place another board on top. Repeat after that one is full. Each level gets more rickety.
I feel like this jenga tower of monopoly boards were on is pretty rickety
So that means Chipotle will lead by example and start paying all their employees a livable wage, right? … Right??
higher wages are not the solution; universal basic income is. higher wages just mean it’s even more difficult for companies to higher employees, which means there will be fewer jobs overall. also, you’re excluding people who are unable to work that way.
Overall job loss is not what happened the last thirty-odd times the federal minimum wage was raised, or any of the times individual states raised minimum wage, but go ahead and believe it will happen the next time for sure.
What has happened is the newly higher-paid employees spend that money, and the new demand creates new jobs, enough to offset the losses from the old employers deciding to manage with a smaller staff. As long as the size of the increase is in the same range as all the previous ones, there’s every reason to believe the effect would be the same.
I wish the federal congress would just do several years of catch-up increases, then tie it to inflation so we can stop arguing about it.
I’m all for higher employees!
They do tend to mess up my order, but they are at least super chill and nice when I kindly ask them to fix it.
*hire
Higher wages also just translates to higher rent for their landlords.
Shame poor people can’t connect these dots, but that’s why we are where we are.
that’s just factually not true. i’ll explain it slowly so you can follow:
rent is determined by two things: cost of construction and profit of the landlord.
cost of construction is more or less constant and wouldn’t change if people have more money to spend. profit of the landlord is subject to the free market, i.e. if renting out apartments becomes overly attractive (as in, landlords make more money with it), then new people will enter the market to also become landlords and rent out apartments. since these landlords are all competing against each other, they try to be more attractive to potential customers by lowering their rent, which means lowering their own profit. that’s how the free market works.
The way it actually works is that all the landlords outsource their paperwork to a rental management company like RealPage, which then algorithmically fix prices to be as high as possible.
as high as possible
as high as possible without losing customers to competing landlords
There are homeless people. They’ve already priced out millions of people. They don’t give a shit about “losing customers”. RealPage is the default service in the US, meaning everyone’s rent in each city is in the same ballpark and gets the same rent increase every year.
Not everywhere. Shockingly to many, cities with higher rates of apartment construction have falling rents.
https://www.redfin.com/news/rental-tracker-may-2025/
“Apartment construction in America has been hovering near a 50-year high, and even though renter demand is strong, it’s not keeping pace with supply,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “Many units are sitting vacant for months, which means renters have power to negotiate concessions and landlords have less leeway to keep rents high.”
Yeah, you’re an actual idiot.
Keep being taken advantage of accordingly.
If you think inflation is bad now, wait until the government starts handing out free money. I’m no economist, but some of y’all are dumb as hell.
Inflation depends on the resource people are chasing after and the timeline of the cash infusion. Most resources can be provisioned at greater quantity without price increases if given enough time (years to decades). If everyone poof had double their normal income, and immediately tried to spend it all, there would be supply chain constraints and inflation, sure. Any UI scheme would need to have a gradual rollout to avoid that.
inflation is kinda irrelevant. what matters is people’s real buying power, and that would increase.
The government hands out free money all the time to people taking us for a ride.
Welfare queens aside, Americans don’t know true horror yet. Wait until food gets scarce and your priorities will shift faster than a naked twelve year old running through a GOP bath house.
If I still lived near one (and also had money) I’d probably go to them still.
I paid 16$ for a bowl the other day of the new steak. Ya. That was a hard pill to swallow. 16$. I could have gone to Applebee’s for that price, or Chilli’s!
Most of the time Chipotle’s “new” is just an old protein with a new exotic-sounding seasoning on it.
the best taco place in town (current opinion fluid, we just lost the previous best taqueria and we’re in mourning and search mode) has $2.50 tacos. I have the appetite of a teenager and three satisfy me, plus they’re delicious. i have trouble justifying going elsewhere
Yeah, my favorite taco place is in the back of a gas station. The cashier doesn’t speak a single word of English, but you can get by with some pointing at the menu, hand gestures, and “más queso por favor, y extra picante. Limón apardo.” Tacos are $2.50 each, a giant cup of refried beans is another two dollars, and he’ll usually slide you some extra tortillas to go with the beans for free if you’re a regular.
Sadly, I changed jobs and haven’t been there in a long time. I still occasionally think about making the trek across town, just to get some tacos. I hope he’s okay with all of the ICE raids… People that are pro-ICE shouldn’t be allowed to eat seasoned food.
“todos por favor” is my favorite phrase in spanish
I miss my old spot. Only place that did chicken like I like. Dry and overcooked. They had 3$ tacos and 3 would hit the spot.
Uh, the food at both those restaurants is considerably worse. It’s all just microwaved crap as far as I can tell. You CAN get a beer as either tho, which has them generally winning in my book tho.
Are you trying to tell me that many restaurant chains have premade food they heat in a microwave?! Wheres Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen nightmares when you need it?!
shit. im over a decade older than that group and my wife and I have had to cut out all outside food for over a year.
My household and I weren’t able to eat at a restaurant since before COVID hit, even fast food had jacked their prices up too high. That’s only just now starting to change because we’ve left the US.
fast food was cheap to me until a bit after covid although the dollar menus were getting pretty weak.
Just out of curiosity, what country did you move to and how does it compare with your lifestyle and cost of living in the USA?
Also $11 for a burrito? Yeah, miss me with that bullshit. I’m thankful for chipotle keeping me full while I was in college but shit is literally double the price it was then.
I think folks in our age group have cut more aggressively. More responsibilities
less “more responsibilities” and more once-in-a-generation/century crises.
Shit, I discovered Izzos Illegal Burrito and it’s much better at a fraction of the cost!
But but but…
That’s why it tastes so good.
Title should read:
#Chipotle goes under after last willing customer cratered pants after eating Chipotle
10+$ for a mostly rice burrito? hard pass
rice and beans mostly, almost non-existent “lettuce”
maybe it has something to do with ripping people off on takeout orders
I thought I was CRAZY. I tried the $5 burrito hack on a take out order and was mildly unimpressed. It’s ok in a pinch but for 50 cents more I’ll get way more food at McDonald’s. My wife went in and ordered it on a different day and they gave her SIGNIFICANTLY more food. Like double. In that scenario it’s definitely worth it.
hearing people say “get way more food for $5.50 (total) at McDonald’s” is wild
in Canada, a jr chicken (mchicken equivalent? it’s been a while) is $4. used to be a good value. not anymore
I remember when the McChicken was a buck.
Same
Don’t forget all the other restaurants that are screwing us blue.
Taco Bell adheres to the 12.72% year over year inflation rate because why not?
Two mcchickens or a mcchicken and McDouble are only $5 in most areas.
One regular mcchicken on its own is like 3.79 (California, but I travel a lot and it’s sorta consistent).
Portland metro area a mcchicken is $4.20
They have the audacity to still have it in the “McValue” section
Here in AZ a sausage mcmuffin with egg is 6.99 before tax
Thats crazy, I can get 2 sausage egg n cheese mcmuffins for $4.50 after tax and this is NJ (were not cheap).
And their food is mostly rice and beans.
Yeah i don’t eat there often so it was quite apparent the last couple times that they’ve removed everything with flavor and substituted it for extra rice and beans, while charging more for it. My city has dozens and dozens of Mexican restaurants and food trucks that offer way better taste and portions for way less money.
But it’s such delicious (and overpriced) rice & beans.
Their rice recipe is rice, salt, lime, and cilantro. There, now you can make it at home exactly the same way.
Look, I’m part Mexican, and I can cook. However there is something about the taste of food I didn’t have to make that just makes it better. It’s the same with a sandwich.
I have been telling this for years. The only thing that comes close when making it yourself is cooking in a campfire. Camping food also has a mystical spice that makes no sense
The smoke helps but yes the experience is important.
@Jarix@lemmy.world @mean_bean279@lemmy.world And I agree that /someone else/ making the food makes it better
It’s funny how companies just don’t get it.
Fast food has been historically cheap. Chipotle worked because it was fast, it was cheap, and you didn’t feel like you were as much of a fat ass compared to grabbing a giant bacon burger and a bucket of fries.
Now you go to chipotle and pay $20 for a burrito and a soda. Still fast, still decent enough (at least the one near me), but $20 is highway robbery.
OR, I can go across the street to a sit down restaurant, have a first generation Thai guy (who started his American dream restaurant) whip up the best damn drunken noodles I’ve ever had for $12. AND he does this FASTER than chipotle (seriously how does he do it? Must be a magic wok).
Guess where we grab lunch these days.
it used to be 7$ for a giant burrito, now its almost half the size and more than double the cost.
They do get it, better than most customers.
The entire point is maximizing profit. If you can charge fewer people more for the same product, you’re doing less while making more.
This is just the result of crapitalism. It will never be a system where everyone can afford Chipotle.
We pre-cook as much as we can in Asian restaurants. The wok isn’t magic, the chicken/beef/pork is already 75% cooked.
and it almost always tastes fucking great, unlike fast food nowadays
That’s (probably) the oil and magic salivary granules doing mystical things
Magic salivary granuals is a wonderful turn of phrase/euphemism.
Thanks! I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out something for G and then I immediately felt like an idiot for needing to use a thesaurus when I found it it
The problem is that Chipotle was never really fast food, they were one of the pioneers of the Fast Casual concept, where it was good food, served quickly, but not necessarily cheap. They never really intended to compete against McDonalds head to head. They wanted to be something different.
Chipotle wasn’t that fast. They were locally blacklisted by a lot of doordash drivers due to the wait.
deleted by creator
Doordash is part of the reason it’s not fast anymore. Chipotle, like everywhere else that makes your food on an assembly line as you order it, should take like a minute per person with overlap. Know what you want, have your card ready to pay, enjoy your lunch. But then a driver cuts straight to the register to grab an order of six burritos and a salad that is only half ready because most places wait until the last second to put take-out orders together (fewer complaints about cold/soggy food) which delays the whole process. Repeat every five minutes.
I mean, even like 2018 it wasn’t uncommon to stand in line at my local Chipotle for 15-20 minutes. No DoorDash orders, no online orders. Just really slow workers, but also understaffed, and somehow always waiting for something (rice, veggies, anything from the grill). I mean I can talk that up to poor management.
That sounds like bad management/ownership trying to shave the operating costs as much as possible (without considering the potential losses involved)
We stopped going after giving them 3 chances. There was a location by us that I literally would wait almost an hour extra for the food that I ordered on the app. The crazy part was I was already like 10 min past the pickup time. People who walked in would get the food way quicker, and when people were complaining and told them to cancel our orders, they just smirked and said oh we can’t do that. The first time we figured, ok places have bad days, but after the 2nd time, which was like 6 months later, and it was basically the same, we were done. The 3rd time was like a year later, and a new closer location to us opened. Figured cool, let’s do it. Nope, same shit. The only good news was 2 of the orders were refunded after complaining, and the 3rd, they just gave us a coupon, but it expired since we were done with them.
My issue with chipotle has always been that the food is lukewarm.
I’m not paying 20 dollars for a lukewarm, lightly seasoned burrito.
And whoever rolls those burritos hears “roll” and thinks "roll of bread"and doesn’t understand that a burrito is supposed to be long.
It’s the same problem as burger makers making their burgers TALL. Like bro, that’s the wrong shape for the format of fitting in my mouth.
Say no to chode burritos.
I’ve always had an issue with how people roll burritos at Chipotle. Some get it, but some literally have no fucking clue and it falls apart as soon as I open the aluminum wrapper
I hate this so much. Like they roll it, wrap it, then make it into a football shape. I laughed so hard the last time I got a burrito from there. It tried to mush it back into an appropriate shape but eventually I gave up and put the innards on a plate
A longer cylindrical burrito means that they didn’t put the maximum amount of filling inside.
The more stuff you put in, the rounder the burrito has to be. That’s why you couldn’t reshape it to be a cylinder.
Next time get a fork and eat about a third of the filling, then you’ll be able to rewrap it.
I think the ideal hand burrito from an aesthetic perspective is around 3x long as diameter.
Place near me (Mucho Burrito) will straight up use a second tortilla if you get too much filling.
Chipotle used to do that too.
Now you go to chipotle and pay $20 for a burrito and a soda. Still fast, still decent enough (at least the one near me), but $20 is highway robbery.
Chipotle Burrito and a small fountain soda is $14 in my area. Its certainly risen in price over the last 6 years.
Yeah I think the sofritas burrito or bowl is like 10.99 or 11.99 where I live. The meats more expensive though.
Sometimes I’m just out with coworkers but not starving. I used to get a cheese and chicken quesadilla. It used to cost $4 and change. Then they started charging burrito prices - $15 and change for a tortilla, a handful of shredded cheese and 1/4 of a chicken breast. I get there is regional pricing differences - but their costs (at least here) are out of control.
