Chipotle has gotten a bad reputation for getting stingier and stingier over the years. While they claim to be getting better, customers are still having bad experiences.
In this case, a mom bought a large order of chips from Chipotle for nearly $5 to bring home to her two hungry teenage boys. What she found inside left her feeling shocked and a bit scammed.
Small Vs. Large Bag of Chips
In a viral video with more than 56,500 views, Stacy Hernandez (@stadhdcy) opens by holding up her Chipotle bag with one very specific grievance.
She explains that she’d barely pulled out of the parking lot when she reached in for a chip from the large bag of chips she added to her order and realized something was off. She counted them out loud, one by one.
“One, two, three… five, seven, nine, 11, 13, 15, 17,” she counts.
Seventeen chips. That’s what was in the bag. And she had two teenage sons waiting at home, 15 and 12, who she describes as “bottomless pits.”
“Chipotle, are you f—— kidding me? Did I order one chip? No way that is a large,” she says.
“Seventeen chips is still not sufficient for one serving—small or large,” she says, before turning Chipotle’s own marketing against them. “You said you want your target audience to be people who make a hundred thousand dollars or more a year. Your chips need to be more than that. Even if we make a hundred thousand dollars, we want more than seventeen chips.”
She turned around and went back in. In a follow-up video, she explains that she didn’t check the bag at the counter because she was making room for the cashier could deal with the next person. Plus, she says that shouldn’t even be necessary, and most people aren’t checking their food when they get it.
“Who checks the bag before they walk out?”
Inside, she kept it civil but still addressed the issue.
“I walked in, and I said, ‘I think a mistake happened here. There’s seventeen chips in this bag, and I ordered a large. I don’t know if you rang me up wrong or what happened here, but I’m gonna need more chips than this,’” she recalls.
They handed her a second bag on the spot. That one had a large sticker on it. Since the guac they gave her had been the right size, she figures someone got mixed up and gave her the wrong size chip bag. No hard feelings.
What’s Going On With Chipotle Portion Sizes
Hernandez’s frustration is part of a much bigger conversation that’s been boiling over since 2024.
TikTokers and Reddit users spent months posting videos claiming Chipotle workers were skimping on portions—and the complaints got loud enough that the chain’s then-CEO Brian Niccol had to address it directly. His first attempt didn’t go great.
Speaking to Fortune, he insisted portions hadn’t gotten smaller, then suggested customers who wanted more rice or pico de gallo could try giving workers a subtle nod and a knowing look. The internet did not take that well.
By July 2024, the situation had escalated to the point where a Wells Fargo analyst ordered 75 identical burrito bowls from eight New York City locations just to test the consistency and found the heaviest bowl weighed nearly 50% more than the lightest.
As CBS News reported, Niccol eventually acknowledged on an earnings call that roughly 10% of Chipotle’s 3,500 locations were portioning outliers that needed retraining. The CFO said getting portions back up to standard would cost the company around $50 million.
And then there’s the marketing bit that Hernandez mentions. According to Fox Business, Chipotle’s leadership has publicly stated that about 60% of its core customers earn over $100,000 a year and that the brand intends to “lean into that group in a more meaningful way.”
Commenters React
“That’s the amount of chips I have while I’m deciding if I’m going to have chips!!!” a top comment read.
“Didn’t chipotle CEO just make a bunch of comments about how they are raising prices and they only appeal to people who make over 100 K a year?” a person said.
“The chips are always stale anyway,” another wrote.
“Chipotle consistently finds a way to piss people off,” a commenter added.
@stadhdcy @Chipotle I know you want to cater to “rich” people now but you’re gonna need to feed me like a queen and this ain’t it
BroBible reached out to Stacy Hernandez for comment via TikTok direct message and comment and to Chiptole via email. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.