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Does filming your Chipotle order being made get you bigger portions? We put the 'life hack' to the test
Chipotle has been hit by a wave of criticism over claims it has become stingy with its portion sizes.
The burrito giant has been accused of cutting back on everything from beans to veggies to their highly valued protein items, like chicken, steak and carne asada.
The result: a trend in which several TikTok users have now claimed they get bigger portions by filming their servers, implying that, under the pressure of a mobile phone's camera lens, Chipotle employees are more generous.
DailyMail.com decided to investigate, shopping at two locations of the fast food burrito chain in downtown Manhattan — filming one location and respecting the other's privacy.
'Filming does not result in larger portion sizes,' a Chipotle PR representative said, after users on TikTok began filming the servers making their orders. DailyMail.com has now investigated two locations of the fast food burrito chain in Manhattan (our weight testing is pictured above)
A war has raged for over two months between Gen Z influencers and TikTok users, on one side, and staff at Chipotle, on the other, over allegedly stingier new portions
While our data collection efforts were far below the standard of a true scientific investigation, our test threw up results no advocates for the 'life hack' saw coming.
DailyMail.com made identical steak and chicken burrito bowl orders at the two locations, in an effort to compare and contrast their serving portions by weight.
For the chicken burrito bowl, all of the possible vegetable toppings, plus beans and hot sauce were requested, including the 'fajita'-style roasted peppers and onions.
For the steak bowl, fajita veggies were skipped, and cheese was added to the mix.
Contrary to the claims of numerous, passionate Chipotle consumers on TikTok, the total weight of the burrito bowls were actually lighter at the location where we recorded — by approximately one-to-two ounces in each case.
A likely explanation for these reversed findings was made public by Chipotle worker Atulya Dora-Laskey, who works at a Lansing, Michigan, store.
'We actually go lighter on portions, because we don't want to be on the record violating Chipotle's proportion policy,' as Dora-Laskey told The Guardian in June.
'You could get in trouble with your boss for giving a customer too much food,' she explained, as the corporate franchise has strict official guidelines for scoop size.
Chipotle has been under fire for issues involving the sizes of their orders online and in-store being different from one another
Chipotle's employee 'pocket guide for portion sizes,' leaked to Reddit two years ago, does in fact show what the mandated proportions for each burrito ingredient should be.
Using those charts ourselves, DailyMail.com's chicken bowl and steak bowl ingredients with this guide helped us assess what the weight of our burrito bowls should have been.
The chicken burrito bowl should have clocked-in at 26 ounces.
The steak burrito bowl, with less veggies and a 1-ounce allotment of cheese, would be expected to come in at 25 ounces.
These figures come so close to the recorded Chipotle location's service for these bowls that the experiment lends credence to Dora-Laskey's claims.
Chipotle's 'crew pocket guide for portion sizes,' leaked to Reddit two years ago (above), does in fact show - both visually and by the ounce - what the mandated proportions are for each burrito ingredient as dictated by Chipotle's corporate office
'You could get in trouble with your boss for giving a customer too much food,' Chipotle worker Atulya Dora-Laskey explained. She noted that recording is likely to yield less food for the customer, 'because we don't want to be on the record violating Chipotle's proportion policy'
Estimates for Chipotle's official guidelines on portion sizes come so close to the weights delivered by our videotaped Chipotle location's service that the experiment lends credence to Dora-Laskey's claims. Above, one of our experimental chicken burrito bowls, ready to eat
DailyMail.com's burrito bowl results also matched the weight figures reported by a much more comprehensive study of 75 orders from the chain, conducted by Wells Fargo analysts on a lark.
The analysts, as they told Barrons, came to a median weight of about 21.5 ounces — several ounces below DailyMail.com's orders, but close.
The largest burrito bowl obtained by the team, led by Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem, came out to 27 ounces, while their smallest was just 14 ounces.
Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem set out to test the theory that Chipotle sizes are getting smaller
Fadem's team ordered and weighed their 75 test bowls from eight locations across New York City, and kept variables the same by ordering the same ingredients: white rice, black beans, chicken, pico de gallo, cheese and lettuce, according to Barrons.
When they ultimately returned to their offices, they discovered that the consistency of the burrito bowls varied widely from restaurant to restaurant.
Some locations served bowls that weighed up to 33 percent more than others, their study found.
The frenzy over Chipotle serving sizes appears to have started in earnest around early May, thanks to Keith Lee, a former mixed martial arts fighter and TikTok food critic.
Lee posted a video to his over 16 million followers on the app that appeared to depict the influencer digging into a burrito bowl — and not finding any of the chicken he had ordered.
'These portions be crazy,' he said in the video.
Later that month, another influencer, Isaac Francis, filmed himself ordering at Chipotle and indignantly demanding for more rice and chicken.
'Couldn't let [the employee] 'disrespect me with that protein size,' Francis captioned his video.
In late May, as the intensity over this debate on TikTok reached a fever pitch, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol went on camera to deny portion sizes had gotten smaller.
Jewel Diaz, whose TikTok handle is @jeweldiaz, posted a video on April 8 and showed off her big bowl of food from Chipotle while sitting in her car
Other TikTok users have shared their own experiences with ordering food at Chipotle and some of them claim to be past or present employees at one of their locations
'We always want to give people big portions to get them excited about the food,' he told Fortune.
'It's kind of who we are,' the CEO professed, adding that anyone could simply ask for more of a favored burrito topping at the chain.
Laurie Schalow, Chipotle's chief corporate affairs officer, also told CNN that bowl sizes may vary by the number of ingredients a customer chooses or if they opt to make any ingredient 'light' or 'extra light.'
She also denied that the company has changed its portion sizes.
Addressing the TikTok 'life hack' head on, a company spokesperson told the New York Times, in no uncertain terms: 'Filming does not result in larger portion sizes.'
DailyMail.com's analysis, bolstered by candid disclosure's from Chipotle staff and the Wells Fargo team's 75-burrito bowl review, lends support to the company's claim.