Cheapskate Restaurants Serving Burrito Balls

We stood on the long Chipotle line, watching ingredients being dumped onto tortillas. There was an odd tension in the air. Customers ask for extra scoops of toppings. The workers try to scoop as little as possible. It’s a game of prison-keeper and prisoner, and neither player knows who is who. The workers are a little terrified to anger their aggressive manager by using an extra tortilla to fully wrap the mound of ingredients: mostly rice and a few smears of meat and veggie particulate. We can see the worker also quietly loathes the cold and demanding public; they don’t want to satisfy them with a second free tortilla either. With split mind, the worker tries to compact the mound of ingredients.  She then uses Nasa-level folding techniques to sculpt a giant burrito ball – the edges of the tortillas barely touching.

We showed the video to a restaurant ingredient expert who said, “It would cost an extra 13 cents to just use a second tortilla and make two burritos out of that congealed mess.”

One burrito maker let us join them on their official 4 minute work break, and he told us, “The workers watch you in the monitors, as you eat your burrito-diaper, and they laugh. They watch the toppings explode out in all directions, and they laugh. They watch you cower back to the counter begging for a second tortilla, which can be had for $7, because that would make it two burritos.”

The always-irritated manager said, “We caught a few tortilla smugglers in the past. They bring in their 13 cent tortilla and try to bypass our burrito policy. They live in our backroom now, Chipotle jail.”