Are your fast food meals getting smaller? Wall St analyst who ordered the same take out 75 times reveals his shock findings
A Wall Street analyst has decided to end the debate over whether fast food portions are getting smaller once and for all.
Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem and his team recently set out to test the theory that Chipotle has been skimping on its usually-large portions, after a series of videos posted to TikTok showed employees barely filling their burrito bowls.
The team ordered and weighed 75 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, the study found.
Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem set out to test the theory that Chipotle sizes are getting smaller
He and his team ordered 75 burrito bowls from eight different locations across New York City
The largest burrito bowl the team ordered came out to 27 ounces, while the smallest was just 14 ounces.
Among all 75 burrito bowls - which were divvied out for Wells Fargo analysts' lunches - the median weight was about 21.5 ounces.
Fadem's study comes after months of TikTokers claiming that Chipotle workers were skimping on their ingredients.
The trend began in early May, when Keith Lee - a former mixed martial arts fighter and TikTok food critic who has more than 16million followers on the app - posted a video showing him digging into a burrito bowl, and seemingly not finding any of the chicken he ordered.
'These portions be crazy,' he said in the video.
Later that month, another influencer, Isaac Francis, filmed himself ordering at Chipotle and indignantly asking for more rice and chicken.
He wrote in the caption of the video that he 'couldn't let' the employee 'disrespect me with that protein size,' the Guardian reports.
The study came after months of TikTokers claiming that Chipotle workers were skimping on their ingredients
That video apparently created a trend of people filming Chipotle workers as they fill up their burrito bowls.
In one such video, an employee could be seen refusing to fill the bottom of a bowl.
He later only put in 'eight pieces of steak,' according to the video, in which the creator could be heard saying, 'You gotta be joking, bro. You gotta put more in.'
But amid the fervor, CEO Brian Niccol denied the portion sizes were getting smaller.
'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 continued, saying that if anyone wanted more of any topping, they could simply ask.
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, too, denied that the company changed its portion sizes.
Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol has denied the portion sizes are getting smaller
But Chipotle employees have said there may be a plethora of reasons customers are getting less food - with one telling the Guardian that she is inclined to give customers who film her smaller portions.
'We actually go lighter on portions because we don't want to be on the record violating Chipotle's proportion policy,' Atulya Dora-Laskey said.
'You could get in trouble with your boss for giving a customer too much food,' she explained.
Other times, customers may get less food if the restaurant is starting to run out of an ingredient.
Dora-Laskey said that the company has been experiencing staffing shortages, and it could take staff 'quite a while' to make a new protein if too few employees are scheduled for any given day.
'Once you run out of chicken or whatever meat a customer asks for, it may be 20 to 40 minutes until you get more, which means there will be a lot of angry customers,' she said.
'So you're probably going to do your best to give them as little of a serving as possible.'
Despite the frustrations, Chipotle racked in $9.9billion in revenue last year, and its sales grew seven percent last quarter.
It is now outpacing rivals like McDonalds, with more than 3,400 stores across the United States and a total market value of $86billion.
