I’ve been eating Chipotle most days that I am home for over 10 years. I travel about 30-50% of the year, but during covid I ordered it so much that Chipotle sent me an email to tell me I was in the top 1% of all Chipotle orderers. Even last year, when I traveled a ton, I ordered it 100 times through the app (and more when friends bought, I ordered through doordash, or forgot to scan in person). I even had it catered as the food for my wedding. I think it is an excellent mix of nutrition, taste, convenience, and value.
However, I haven’t eaten a paid meal (more on that later) at Chipotle for two months, and I have no plans on going back. Here’s why, and here’s what I eat instead.
Whenever I come back from a trip, I look forward to eating Chipotle. I often order it at the same time I call my uber, so it’s waiting for me at home. Of course I love the food I eat when traveling, but even still, I look forward to Chipotle. In early January I was coming back from a trip, and I ordered my Chipotle to be delivered.
I opened the bag and saw that there was no guacamole on the bowl. To me, guacamole is the most important part of the bowl (I’d give up meat over guac), so it’s a real bummer to have the bowl without it. Chipotle messes up small parts of the order every once in a while, and I very rarely complain. I remember complaining a couple times during covid, and no times since then. Wrong beans, missing cheese, oddly tiny bowl, wrong rice, salsa I didn’t want? No problem… it happens infrequently enough that I don’t really care.
But no guac… I’m filling out the “how did we do?” form.
I immediately get a reply back. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
…In the meantime, to make up for this, I’ve added an offer for a Free Side Guac to the rewards section of your Chipotle account for you to use within 30 days.
Now, I may lose you here. About 25% of my friends think that this is an appropriate remedy and think I’m crazy for not thinking so. In my mind, though, giving me a tiny coupon for some future order doesn’t compensate for making my meal unenjoyable.
My response:
I appreciate the quick response, but I don’t feel like a free side of
guac is adequate. I order Chipotle nearly every single day I’m home, and
I order it with guac 100% of the time because I don’t enjoy Chipotle
without the guac. It’s like pizza without the cheese.
She immediately writes back:
Thank you for reaching back. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to you due to that. I’ve removed the free side guac offer that was added to your account for this order and voided $2.82 of this transaction from your card for the missing side guac instead— this pending charge will adjust accordingly upon posting to your account within 3-5 business days.
WHAT? Instead of free guac you’re giving me the value of the guac? I’ll admit that this is petty and totally inconsequential, but at this point I was offended and decided that I wasn’t going to eat at Chipotle anymore.
I wrote back saying that I was one of their most frequent customers and explained why this doesn’t compensate for a messed up meal, but they wrote me back saying there was nothing they could do. I asked for it to be forwarded to a supervisor, and he gave me a copy/paste response about how sorry they are and how seriously they take this issue, and made no mention of any remedy.
Look, I know this is a $15 issue at most. I wouldn’t notice the $15 if they put it back in my bank account. On principle, though, I think it’s insane to deny a free meal to a customer who orders 100+ times per year, never complains, and had a bad experience.
The next day I went to Sprouts and was determined to make an even better meal. I’m principled, but if I’m not going to make my life worse to prove a point to a giant company that definitely doesn’t care at all. Here were my parameters for the meal:
- It must be made primarily of ready to use products (no chopping, no measuring, no soaking, etc)
- It must be made of entire bags/cans/packages of ingredients
- The macronutrients must be roughly 33% each
- All ingredients must keep for a long time so that I don’t have to plan how much to buy in between trips
- It must cook in the instantpot in 1 minute (plus heatup / cooldown time)
- It must cook into even portions (1,2,3, etc… no 2.5 portions)
- Everything must be as healthy as possible, whole organic / grass fed foods only
- It must taste ok
I spent over an hour in the grocery store putting different things into my cart and combining them in different ways, adding up the macros and amounts.
I’ll admit that my first attempt was a bit rough (don’t try pressure cooking shrimp), and I’ve tweaked it a bit as I’ve gone, but I now have a meal that is basically the perfect meal if you don’t care how your food tastes. And if you do care, it’s still pretty solid. I call it Warm and Brown.
Ingredients for two servings:
- One pound grass fed ground beef or lamb
- One bag frozen organic mixed vegetables (carrots, corn, peas, green beans)
- One bag frozen fancier vegetables (brussels, bell peppers, mushrooms, red onions)
- 3/4 cup red lentils (this breaks my no measuring rule, but I just use a 3/4 cup scoop, so it’s still fast)
- 2 cups water
- 1 packet organic seasoning (I’ve tried a bunch of different ones and they’re all good)
- Some salt
If you are in a rush or really don’t care what your food tastes like, you can just throw the meat in frozen or refrigerated. The meat will still be really pink, but if you just stir it around it cooks like hot pot by the time you take a bite. I’ve even done this with a frozen brick of lamb and it worked ok.
If you want it to taste much better, put the meat in the fridge the day before so that it thaws, and cook it in the instant pot on saute for a few minutes to brown the meat.
After browning the meat, or without browning it, dump the water and lentils into the pot. Dump the seasoning packet in. Dump the veggies on top. Don’t bother stirring, just set it for a minute. Stir it up and eat half of it.
I live pretty close to Chipotle, but this actually takes less time than going to pick up food. It’s slightly more work than just ordering for delivery, but takes less time and is a little bit cheaper. I think each bowl ends up costing about $10.
After I came up with Warm and Brown I got a random non-sequitur email from Chipotle giving me a free meal. My friend Noah was so incensed by this whole thing that he also reached out to Chipotle and got me another free meal. I ate both of them, but haven’t ordered any more.
Chipotle tastes better than Warm and Brown, but I don’t really miss it. W+B is healthier, just as convenient, more consistent, and doesn’t close on random holidays. I’ll reevaluate my Chipotle boycott in 2025. Whenever Cava comes to Vegas I’ll probably eat that every day because I like it even more than Chipotle.
I’m hoping that some number cruncher at Chipotle decides to look at top customers who suddenly stop ordering and realize that their petty decision to give me guac instead of a meal led me to an even more petty decision to not order there anymore.
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Photo is a bowl of Warm and Brown
Superhuman 5 was a blast! Superhuman 6 will be the first weekend of August. You can email me if you want to lock in a spot now, but I’ll write more about it later.
I’ve been feeling a little less burnt out on writing these days… may start posting more frequently…
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