Chipotle to Focus on Portion Sizes After Customer Complaints

Chipotle President and CEO Brian Niccol has apparently seen and heard numerous complaints from franchise customers about portion sizes. During a July 24 earnings conference call with investors, he said: drew attention to the corporate’s culture based on “generous portions.”

According to The Hill, within the opening minutes of the decision, he reminded investors, “(N)here was never a directive to provide our customers with less. Generous portion size is a core value of the Chipotle brand. It always has been and always will be. With that in mind, the feedback we received caused us to revisit our execution across our entire system with the goal of always serving our guests delicious, fresh, personalized burritos and bowls with generous portion sizes.”

Niccol’s comments come long after many social media users have joked for years that the chain’s servers don’t serve enough meat. Those complaints recently gained more attention after online food critic Keith Lee posted a TikTok video in May detailing a Chipotle quesadilla hack that went viral, with Lee half-jokingly asking, “Where’s the chicken?”

That same month, after Lee and other social media users documented instances where they felt servers weren’t generous with their portions, Niccol defended the restaurant, insisting and showing that customers can take a have a look at their servers in the event that they weren’t satisfied with the portions served at Chipotle.

During a conference call on financial results, Niccol acknowledged that portion sizes were inconsistent, but said about 10% of the corporate’s restaurants require retraining or bringing them up to Chipotle standards, according to The Hill.

“To be more consistent across all 3,500 restaurants, we’ve focused on those that have shown outliers in our customer surveys for portion sizes, and we’re putting a renewed emphasis on training and coaching to make sure we’re consistently getting bowls and burritos right,” Niccol said.

Niccol added that positive feedback from online and offline customers is enough to spread the word about changes in some chains.

“Look, I’m already seeing it on social media, people commenting on the burritos, the bowls that they’re getting,” Niccol said. “And, you know, I think the best source of marketing is word of mouth because people have that experience with Chipotle.”

Although the corporate has raised prices lately, investors indicated in the decision that there are currently “no plans” to raise prices further, as Chipotle saw an 11% increase in sales within the last quarter, which NPR says was due to faster and more efficient store operations in addition to a limited-time promotion for chicken al pastor.