Who’d see this coming, when the population has no money to spend and the top 0.1% is taking all the money, so there’s nothing to spend? Not the billionaires, that’s for sure. I really cannot wait for the fall when they will realise how much they fucked up. I’m definitely not going to help them, no matter how much money they offer. They did this to themselves, and I’ll be happy when the population starts eating ^the rich^.
It’s actually been this way for a while. The top 10% of American earners do half of all consumer spending. A massive amount of the economy has shifted to reflect this. Businesses are often targeting business to business sales rather than business to customer. Pay to win video games use free players as content for whales to play through. And if you’re selling physical goods, you’re probably either doing it as cheaply as possible, or absolutely gouging the assholes you’re selling to (think ikea vs Kohler’s premium brand, for which a lamp costs 5 figures and the website doesn’t gave prices listed).
I always thought whales were actually middle class or even poor people that have essentially a gambling addiction.
Sometimes. The only real difference is earnings. There was the rumor that a saudi prince kept a couple mobile games alive solely based on his own spending for a while. Anecdotally I know of at least one person making six figures who was spending five figures a month on mobile games (and eventually declared bankruptcy) and another spending a grand a month that fit it into his budget. The point remains, games designed to extract thousands from individual players have grown very popular among industry execs because it’s more profitable (and often easier) to squeeze an inordinate amount out of one player than to get $10 out of 100 players. Marketing for that top 1% spender is definitely exploiting addiction, but they’re making it for the ones who will continue to afford it, and thus continue to fund the game
Nope, it’s mostly nepo babies just like any other high cost hobby.
The middle class or less well off with gambling addictions are usually reported on so it looks like a regular person problem
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.
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Yeah I think the sofritas burrito or bowl is like 10.99 or 11.99 where I live. The meats more expensive though.
Chipotle wasn’t that fast. They were locally blacklisted by a lot of doordash drivers due to the wait.
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.
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.
That sounds like bad management/ownership trying to shave the operating costs as much as possible (without considering the potential losses involved)
Boatwright said Chipotle is “doubling down on restaurant execution,” increasing marketing spend, plans to create more digital experiences, and introduce more innovation.
The problem is prices for the quality you get. Instead of spending money on improving those things, they’re dumping it on more commercials and “digital experiences”.
Yes, that will totally make people or want to buy overpriced mediocre fake Mexican food.
I went to Chipotle for the first time in a long while, and I don’t even recall what the hype was to begin with. It’s just not that great anymore. It’s been a while since I’ve been back. Given inflation I’d rather learn how to make my own burrito that’s better than them
The original hype as I understand it was that it was decently flavored food that they gave you plenty of for a reasonable price. Sounded like a regular old local Mexican restaurant to me, but as a national chain.
I only had it after it had peaked and it was fine. Guess it stood out more when it was catching on.
That, and it was seen as relatively healthy for fast food. It was one of the only fast food options at the time where not everything was fried and drowning in saturated fats. Prior to Chipotle, Subway was considered the healthiest fast food chain.
I do think they helped to widen what corporations thought was possible. Kind of what Starbucks did to coffee. Prior to Starbucks, most Americans probably confined themselves to Folgers.
I see similar ideas pop up - Tokyo Joe’s, Noodles & Company, Garbanzos, Illegal Petes.
They might not be everyone’s thing, but at least restaurants geared toward finding a fast, reasonably-priced lunch started to move beyond the burger joint or the subway shop…I think all of these started in Colorado, probably (?) influenced by Chipotle.
The first time I had Chipotle, I was blown away by the amount of food I got. At the time, my brother and I had a philosophy of, “You’re not full until you feel fat.” Yet the first burritos we got from Chipotle, we couldn’t even finish them - they were huge! I was astounded that for the price, we got so much.
Nowadays, it’s nothing like that. The burritos are still good, sure, but it’s sad to think about what a deal it used to be compared to what it’s become today.
Corporate slop bowls… I can’t see them any different from that now
I don’t eat there because the last time I did, I got severe food poisoning. If I want shit fast Mexican food, I’ll go to Taco Bell.
Plus, at taco bell, you can get like 5 or 6 bean and rice burritos even if you add a few toppings to it and have it toasted, for the same price of one burrito at chipotle.
Isn’t it Mission style which once was part of Mexico but is now the USA. It’s the style from the SF bay area.
Pretty sure a lot of young people with jobs can’t afford it either.
Do you people have
phonesKlarna?Maybe robots and AI can buy your food. 😐
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.
So that means Chipotle will lead by example and start paying all their employees a livable wage, right? … Right??
Well this is interesting to me given that my employer has internally been talking about how Chipotle, the fast casual counter serve restaurant, has been growing faster than our full service pasta restaurant. Which obviously means they’re stealing our market share in our separate segment and we need to move to compete with CMG more.
Methinks it is time to leave this industry.
Edit: haha. hahahahahahaha
A particularly challenged cohort is the 25- to 35-year-old age group," Boatwright said. "This group is facing several headwinds, including unemployment, increased due loan repayment and slower real wage growth.
ahahahahahahaha they are so out of touch if this is news to them
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).
What is this hack? My Chipotle hack is to order a burrito bowl with all the free extra toppings, get two tortillas on the side, and you can portion out the bowl into about two regular sized Chipotle burritos.
It’s the same but you order a taco instead of the burrito bowl. All the free toppings you get them on the side.
Nah, the food just really sucks. Used to be good, isn’t anymore. It’s not that they can’t afford it, it’s that if you’re going out for cheap food once in a while, Chipotle is somehow worse than what you can make at home, for more money.
I remember when Reddit was flooded with posts about how great Chipotle was. Felt a little manufactured; their food was fine, but nothing better than I can get from a halfway decent local place.
Before McDonald’s got their grubby mitts on them, I loved Chipotle. I know they’re out from under that thumb now, but the damage is done, and they’re not coming back.
That would have been in the mid-'90s. I’d assume it was basically like an entirely different restaurant back then
Yup.
Pretty sure they were a subsidiary from the get-go.
We’re picking up speed now. Economic doom is imminent!
Millenials killed chipotle too, huh?
Don’t stop the guac, don’t stop the guac.
Guacamole? In this economy?
Is that a backyardigans reference? Love it!
The food is meh. The prices are high. Young people are broke. What do you expect?
I love Chipotle. Maybe it’s just the locations near me, but the quality is good and prices are not as high as some others in the thread say; certainly not $20. Maybe $11 or $12, and for a really big meal.
Unfortunately I stopped eating there when I stopped shopping at Target, when they got rid of their DEI policies in clear capitulation to MAGA. Plenty of places with comparable quality & price that at least try not to do hiring discrimination
Oof media didn’t talk about DEI. I’m not going to chipotle anymore
Any info on this? I can’t find anything about Chipotle removing any DEI stuff.
Fuck all this capitalist bullshit. Bring about a basic income for all. No one should have to be forced into violence just to feed themselves or their family. A whole shitload of social problems would disappear if basic income were enacted.
