Worshiped for long enough, any beloved cultural touchstone is bound to fall from grace. Skinny jeans; Tumblr; One Direction. Now, according to a vocal chorus, that includes Chipotle.
Feelings toward the burrito chain, which was once synonymous with moderately upscale, fast-casual Mexican food, have soured in recent years. “It doesn’t hit the way it used to,” TikToker Jeanine Amapola Ward said in a viral TikTok video this summer. Her musings on the “downfall of Chipotle” struck a tender nerve with thousands of commenters.
In the video, the Los Angeles–based creator laments not just the $14 sticker price on a burrito bowl that once cost $9—but that it has somehow become less delicious. Users from across the country flooded her comment section with reports of declining quality at their own outposts.
“It just doesn’t scratch that itch anymore 😭,” one writes.
“Chipotle used to be incredible,” writes another. “I ate there every day for 7 years.”
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Amapola Ward’s TikTok may have spawned a particularly fervent discussion about the state of Chipotle, but it’s certainly not the first. The search “Chipotle is bad”—scientific, I know—returns hundreds more TikToks. You’ll find a video of someone pushing desiccated bits of chicken around with a fork, set dramatically to the TikTok-ism “immediately no,” and others puzzled as to why the bowls they once loved and consumed religiously have started to taste different at best, inedible at worst. There are goopy, soupy bowls buried in an avalanche of sour cream and daintily portioned bowls, with food scales to prove it. In Reddit threads with names like “Chipotle is so bad now” or “Chipotle USED TO BE good,” ever outspoken Redditors gather to bemoan meager portions and dry rice. So, what happened to Chipotle?
The company has jacked up its prices over the past couple of years (five times since 2021, Business Insider reports), like seemingly every other business; the burrito chain blames these hikes on inflation and rising minimum wages. Even assuming burrito bowl quality has stayed entirely flat for the past 10 years, as the price has steadily climbed, its value has declined. But that—even combined with tighter portion control post-pandemic—can’t entirely explain the hordes of once-Chipotle fans alleging its star has fallen. (A Chipotle spokesperson told Bon Appétit portion sizes have not changed over time)
Poring over the anti-Chipotle discourse, I noticed a common reference point: the era between the years 2012 and 2015. These were the chain’s golden years, TikTokers and Redditors consistently asserted—a better time, when “the rice was fresh and wasn’t too dry, the chicken was juicy and was cooked damn near to perfection,” per one commenter on Amapola Ward’s TikTok.
At its peak, portions were piled high with little restraint, bowls nearly burst at the seams, prices were relatively low for the amount and quality of food you received, and the world was a better place for it. Each of Chipotle’s many locations prepared and cooked a good share of their ingredients on-site. A freshness-first approach meant that the produce that appeared behind the glass was chopped and shredded mere feet from customers.
Then, starting in October 2015, Chipotle endured a notorious monthslong, multi-episode E. coli scandal (hospitalizing 22 people in 14 states), compounded by Norovirus and Salmonella outbreaks in between.
That year Chipotle scrambled to manage the Whac-A-Mole crises (not to mention reverse course on its readily descending stock), and in doing so, made critical changes to facets of its food preparation, which included retooling its supply chain. Chipotle now prepares certain ingredients ahead of time in centralized locations, marinating chicken in plastic bags rather than large bowls as the chain had done prior, pre-chops tomatoes off-site, uses sous vide to precook steak, and all in all vets everything more thoroughly. Ingredients that used to travel feet—from your local Chipotle’s kitchen to your burrito bowl—now journey miles. “With all of these programs in place, we are confident that we can achieve a level of food safety risk that is near zero,” a Chipotle spokesperson said at the time.
