Why Robots Aren’t the Answer to Chipotle’s Portion Size Complaints

“There have been no changes to our portion sizes, and our associates have been following proper portioning practices,” Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs and food safety officer, told Business Insider.

Still, investors seem concerned about the complaints, which are now proliferating on social media. Some activist customers are taking matters into their own hands, filming employees taking orders so they can get bigger portions.

Wells Fargo analysts tested that concern by ordering 75 burrito bowls and weighing them. The team found that portions were wildly inconsistent, with the heaviest bowl in a store order weighing 47% more than the lightest, the analysts wrote in a note published by Fortune.

“While throughput is improving, order consistency remains an opportunity,” the analysts wrote in the report.

Chipotle stock price drops

Chipotle shares posted a modest gain on Wednesday after beating analysts’ expectations for second-quarter revenue and earnings.

Overall, however, shares of the fast-food chain were down 24.5% on Wednesday from a record high reached in mid-June.

While the company has implemented a 50-for-1 stock split, there may be other technical reasons for the decline, Danilo Gargiulo, senior restaurant analyst at AllianceBernstein, told Business Insider that talking about portion sizes probably isn’t helping.

“Certainly, the number of conversations I’ve had with investors about this seems to suggest that there’s some concern about what this might mean for consumers’ willingness to go to Chipotle,” Gargiulo said. “So I think there’s some truth to the fact that the stock price is hurt by this.”

One possible solution to Chipotle’s portion-size problem, which the restaurant adamantly claims it doesn’t have, could be a robot line. They’re fast, can save on human labor costs, and are consistent.

Chipotle is already working with Hyphen, a San Jose, California-based robotics company, to streamline digital order fulfillment.

Hyphen’s robots, The Makeline, which BI had an exclusive look at in 2023, can make 180 burritos per hour—about six times more than a human worker.

Daniel Fukuba, co-founder of Hyphen, previously told BI that makeline offers useful features such as dynamic chunking.

If a customer adds multiple toppings, the robots will “upsize” each ingredient while also reducing the portion size if there are a lot of toppings to make sure everything fits in the bowl or burrito.

“Overall, we’re always more accurate than a comparable person running at the same speed,” Fukuba said. “It’s more consistent and accurate than someone who’s normally running at the same speed.”

A Chipotle spokesman declined to comment on the matter, but pointed to comments CEO Brian Niccol made Wednesday during an earnings conference call, which referenced Hyphen and Autocado, a robot that helps cut Chipotle’s guacamole prep time in half.

“I’m excited about each of these initiatives and I truly believe we’ll see some significant changes in the back office in the coming years that will help improve consistency across our restaurants and provide a better overall experience for our teams and guests,” he said.

“The Secret Sauce”

But replacing front-line workers with robots takes away a key feature that Chipotle employees have provided to customers, perhaps almost by accident, over the years — the ability to ask workers, “Can I have some more?”

“The in-store experience, you don’t want to change because it’s part of Chipotle’s secret sauce,” Gargiulo, the restaurant analyst, told BI. “It’s part of the consumer experience that goes in there, checks out what they have, and asks the person, ‘Hey, can I get some more?’ Or mixes the ingredients to their liking. There are people who change the layers that Chipotle (product) is made in, too.”

Part of this unique Chipotle experience is what fans of the chain sometimes refer to as Chipotle “tricks” — slight changes or modifications a customer can make to order a larger portion.

These include simple things like being nice to the waiter to get large portions, not asking for a double portion until the first portion has been added, or asking for half and half meat to get more chicken or steak for the price of a single portion.

Even Niccol is privy to some of these so-called tricks, telling Fortune magazine this year that the secret to bigger portions is to get workers to look around.

He told the magazine that if customers “want a little more rice or a little more pico (de gallo),” give them a quick look and “usually our guys and women give them a little more scoop.”

During Wednesday’s earnings call, Niccol did not directly respond to a shareholder’s question about whether the restaurant plans to put Hyphen’s production line at the counter, rather than just digital ordering. The CEO said the restaurant is making a number of changes to its restaurant equipment that will make Chipotle more consistent

Gargiulo told BI that the nuances of face-to-face interaction may seem trivial, but they are an essential part of the Chipotle experience.

“It may sound silly, but personalization is part of Chipotle’s DNA,” he said. “Yes, you can have the same personalization with a digital production line, but you’re more limited in what you can do.” ← When we say make-line, do we mean Makeline? Robot? Technically a robot, but I’ve seen robots widely referred to as “digital production line.” so maybe both?

The analyst added that robots could be a solution for digital orders, which Chipotle said it plans to do. But for in-store orders? Not anytime soon.

“Will we have fully automated stores? No, I don’t think so,” Gargiulo said.