The United States wastes an incredible amount of food. According to the USDA, anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of the country’s food supply is wasted, “correspond[ing] to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.”
While much of this waste happens during the production and transportation stages of the supply chain, a sizable portion occurs in the areas where one might usually expect, such as restaurant waste. Fourth Enterprises LLC estimates that “around 84.3% of unused food in restaurants is thrown away while only 14% is recycled, and only 1.4% is donated.”
This information has left many users wondering what their favorite restaurants do with their leftover food. When it comes to Chipotle, TikTok user Katt (@spicyykatt) has an idea: they simply reheat the food to be served in the morning the next day.
In a video with over 330,000 views as of Sunday, Katt says, “Someone had told me that if you get Chipotle in the morning, that they give you all the leftovers from the night before or the day before…so it’s not good to go to Chipotle at 11am.”
She then requests that anyone who used to work at Chipotle tell her whether this is true.
The answer, it turns out, is not as easy as it may seem. First, some users claimed that Chipotle did, in fact, reheat food from the night before to be served the following day.
“It’s true! -chipotle employee,” a user wrote.
“Chipotle worker here, best earliest time to come for the newest ‘freshest’ items is 12pm,” added another.
However, others countered that their local Chipotle locations cooked the food fresh every morning.
“My daughter worked with them and she says it’s fresh that they cook it before opening,” a commenter shared.
“Been a while since I’ve worked there but they made us throw everything away at the end of the night and make everything fresh in the AM before opening,” a second user claimed.
When a similar discussion came to Reddit, users provided a similar variety of answers.
“Throw out rice and chips, everything else goes back on the line the next day,” claimed a Redditor.
“Rices and steak are saved and donated to a local food shelter. Chips, taco shells, vinaigrette, fajitas, and lettuce are thrown away (lettuce is composted),” an additional commenter detailed.
“Steak gets weighed, bagged, and a food bank comes and gets that along with leftover plain white/brown rice. Asada gets trashed due to the cilantro in it,” stated a further user. “All other proteins are reheated the next morning.”
In short, it seems to depend on location. However, some say they don’t mind being served leftovers.
As one Redditor put it, “I’m not mad at all at well-seasoned leftover meat.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Chipotle via email and Katt via email.
The furor stems from a viral post originally shared to Reddit's r/Chipotle community. User Extreme_Paper5550 said they're a 23-year-old college student working for the Mexican grill. According to their post, they were written up for "accidentally misgendering" a new employee during training.
"Chipotle failed to ensure that its employees both understood and complied with its food safety protocols, resulting in hundreds of customers across the country getting sick," United States Attorney Nick Hanna said in a statement at the time.
In July 2018, over the course of at least eight days, approximately 647 people who dined at a Chipotle restaurant in Powell, Ohio reported illness related to Clostridium perfringens, a bacteria that grows rapidly when food is not held at appropriate temperatures.
According to several commenters who claim to be Chipotle workers or former workers, Chipotle cooks will sometimes use their leftovers from the night before and serve them first thing in the morning before dipping into fresh items and ingredients for the day.
The trend stems from a desire to boycott Chipotle due to rising prices and shrinking portion sizes at the fast-food restaurant. This issue has been highlighted by popular food critic Keith Lee, who recently reviewed Chipotle. “I used to love Chipotle.
Sodium is likely the biggest threat to healthy eating at Chipotle. A flour tortilla itself has about 600 milligrams of sodium, and Chipotle's meat options range from 310-560 milligrams.
In October 2006, McDonald's fully divested from Chipotle. This was part of a larger initiative for McDonald's to divest all of its non-core business restaurants — Chipotle, Donatos Pizza, and Boston Market — so that it could focus on the main McDonald's chain.
“This is just rude,” one user wrote on the social media platform X, where someone shared a video of workers being recorded. “I feel so bad for the people that work at Chipotle,” another person said. Despite the backlash, Chipotle told Nexstar that its portion sizes haven't actually changed.
Chipotle Mexican Grill is a publicly traded company, meaning its shareholders own it. The largest shareholders of Chipotle are investment companies, including The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street Corporation.
Update: Chipotle Ordered to Pay $25 Million Settlement for Tainted Food. Chipotle Mexican Grill has agreed to pay a record $25 million fine to resolve criminal charges that it served contaminated food that sickened more than 1,100 people in the U.S. from 2015 to 2018, according to ABC News.
In December 2015, a norovirus incident at a Chipotle restaurant in Boston sickened 141 people. According to the DPA, that outbreak likely was the result of an ill apprentice manager who was ordered to continue working in violation of company policy after vomiting in the restaurant.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food and safety basics states cooked food can be left at room temperature up to two hours. If the temperature outside (or inside your house) is 90°F or above, you should cut that time in half.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, beginning in October 2019, a male restaurant manager at the Prattville Chipotle Mexican Grill sexually harassed the employee daily through unwanted sexual advances, sexual comments and sexually offensive conduct, including sexual contact.
As set out in the DPA, some store-level Chipotle employees from the 2015 to 2018 time period reported inadequate staffing and food safety training. Employees also reported pressure to work while sick, even though that was against Chipotle's sick-exclusion policies.
Chipotle recently received a 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, which highlights the best workplaces for LGBTQIA+ equality. **Sizes and quantities limited; one shirt per employee.
Outspoken members of the ag community accused Chipotle of using farmers as a punching bag to sell burritos, and news outlets covered Chipotle's controversial approach and the self-inflicted public relations challenge the company faced through its critique of and disassociation from industrial agriculture (Barrett, 2014 ...
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