Read the Chipotle CEO’s Response to Shrinkflation Accusations

In today’s episode of “Fast Food CEO’s Doing Things That Cause The Internet To Explode,” we bring you an edition from Chipotle. The chain’s head executive, Scott Boatwright, may not have been in the news this year as much as McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski, who set the online world ablaze with his now-infamous Big Arch video (and who recently tried to eat on camera again, causing a recurrence of all that viral activity), but he’s been around. In February, he discussed how Chipotle would be trying to salvage low sales with a Happy Hour, and more generally, it seems he’s been hard at work trying to maximize the now-pricey restaurant’s sense of value.

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Which brings us to an interview he did this week, in which he was asked about shrinkflation – and his answer hasn’t exactly gone down too well. Let’s discuss.

Apparently, It Really Is That Simple

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Boatwright was asked by Executive Editor Brian Sozzi what he made of people thinking that their burrito bowls and portions at Chipotle were getting smaller over time. Boatwright responded with a simple solution: You just have to ask for more. “It has always been our brand ethos and it is still to this day, we serve big beautiful bowls and burritos,” he said in his answer, which was quoted on X. “Full stop, no questions asked. If you want more, just ask the team member. I promise you there’s never a team member on that line that’s going to say no.”

Is this actually what would happen, though? Can you really just ask for more and get more, without any friction whatsoever? According to the responses to this video, that’s not quite the case.

And What Do Chipotle Workers Say About All This?

Well, here we come to the main point: There seems to be a bit of a difference between what Boatwright is saying and what Chipotle workers have been instructed to do. “Yeah we are trained not to do this,” said one person responding to the CEO’s statement on Reddit. A customer, meanwhile, said, “I guess I’ll have to keep a copy of the tweet with me in screenshot form at all times.”

Plenty of other people also pointed out that while Boatwright said that you could ask for more, he didn’t say that you wouldn’t be charged extra if you do so – and more generally, the feeling that this statement has created is one of a CEO partaking in PR, which may well then make the lives of the people who work in its stores harder. “Prices are up, portions are down. Locations are understaffed and the food quality has sunk,” said another person in the Reddit thread. “Lots of employees hate working there because of the insane management and constant pressure to serve what people expect vs what management wants,while both management and customer are staring at you.”

It’s important to point out, of course, that the people discussing this quote in the Reddit thread can’t be verified as employees – but there’s no denying that this statement has caused a real stir. Will there be as much fallout as there was from the Big Arch saga? Only time will tell.