No, You're Not Imagining Things — Chipotle's Burritos Are in Fact More Expensive

Sorry, Chipotle fans, but your burritos and bowls are about to get more expensive. 

On Wednesday, Laurie Schalow, Chipotle's chief corporate affairs officer, confirmed to reporters that “For the first time in over a year, we have taken a modest price increase of approximately 2% nationally to offset inflation." According to NBC News, this rare, direct admission came after Truist Securities financial group released its report that found that 2% price increase across 20% of Chipotle locations surveyed.

As Reuters noted, many of the critical ingredients Chipotle uses in its menu items — including dairy, beef, and avocado — have become more expensive in 2024, which could have led to price increases. "The timing of the increase is also a positive signal regarding current demand trends," Brian Vaccaro, an analyst at Raymond James, shared with Reuters.

Chipotle has had a bit of a rough year in general. As CNBC reported, the chain missed its most recent revenue forecasts, which noted that traffic has been steady. However, Truist Securities' report added that demand showed signs of a slowdown. 

It also got majorly called out by its customers for "shrinkflation." Over the summer, fans sparked a social media frenzy (first noticed by TikToker Keith Lee) by accusing the chain of dishing out smaller portions, which it then later confirmed, at least partially, after an internal review. 

“[W]e've always felt the key equity of Chipotle is these generous portion sizes, so we wanted to make sure we're executing consistently across the system," Brian Niccol, the company's CEO at the time, shared on an earnings call in July. "And we've probably found about 10% or more of restaurants that we really view as outliers that needed to be retrained, re-coached to be executing against what we believe are the right standards." 

However, as Niccol added, none of this was ever intentional. "There was never a directive to provide less to our customers," he said. "With that said, getting the feedback caused us to relook at our execution across our entire system with the intention to always serve our guests delicious, fresh custom burritos and bowls with generous portions."

Hopefully, those "generous portions" will now make it worthy of a 2% markup.