Before me was a lunch as big and heavy as a brick, wrapped in gold foil that glittered with the promise of a delicious meal.
However, what I was about to try was not a culinary treasure; It was a burrito from Chipotle.
Pounded pastor chicken in rice with cilantro. sour cream and cheese for flavor; pinto beans and red sauce for flavor. French fries and a cup of Tex-Mex style cheese as a snack, and a mandarin fresh water with cardamom to wash it all down.
It was perhaps my fifth time eating at the Newport Beach-based fast-casual chain because the idea of spending money on overpriced burritos of any flavor was never my thing. That put me in the minority of a generation of diners who transformed what began in 1993 as a small Denver restaurant into a multimillion-dollar multinational with almost 4,000 locations.
So why was I at a Tustin Chipotle on a recent rainy day? I wanted to find out why more and more Americans are starting to see things my way. As my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reported last week, 2025 was the worst year in the company's history.
Same-store sales fell for the first time since Chipotle went public two decades ago. Shares fell 37%, a drop that speaks to tough times in an industry that continues to see rising costs and falling consumer spending create a mixed platter of hell.
Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright admitted in an earnings call with investors that he expects 2026 to remain stable because the “landscape of the company is changing.” However, he tried to highlight what he considers glimmers of hope. New equipment that will allow you to obtain “juicier steaks and chicken cooked to perfection every time.” A relaunched rewards program. More than 300 new locations scheduled to open in 2026, including the first Chipotle in Mexico.
“As we look to the next 20 years,” Boatwright concluded in his opening remarks, “I have never been more confident in the strength of this brand and our ability to win.”
As I read his thoughts as I prepared to enjoy my lunch, I almost felt bad for Boatwright, whose base salary in 2025 was $1.1 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's like I forgot what Chipotle sells: Mexican food.
For more than 140 years, restaurateurs have become millionaires by taking advantage of America's insatiable appetite for almost any food product from south of the border. But as inevitably happens with all empires, the good times stop. Waves of products (chili, canned tamales, fajitas, hard tacos, frozen margaritas) that were once considered “authentic” are now so completely assimilated into the American diet that they are now considered as quaint as chicken pot pie and Limburger sandwiches.
Few Mexican restaurant chains in the United States (actually, only Taco Bell) have escaped this fate. Boatwright would do well to heed this history and take Chipotle to new frontiers or prepare for its inevitable irrelevance.
Burritos from Burritos La Palma, a small chain in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
When Steve Ells founded the company in a former ice cream parlor, he was following the example of many before him who looked at Mexicans making delicious food and thought they could do it better and get rich from it. In the case of Chipotle, Ells freely admits that his muse was the taquerias in San Francisco's Mission District that made burritos in the assembly-line shape and size that his company would soon imitate.
“For five dollars each, they're making good money,” he told me in my 2012 book “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.”
Chipotle emerged at the perfect time and place, when mass burritos spread across the country during the 1990s and 2000s, especially settling into college towns and gentrifying neighborhoods where young people wanted fast, filling Mexican food, but a little more elevated than fast food. Ells's real innovation was turning eating at Chipotle into a virtue-signalling experience. It hired boutique farmers for meats and produce under the banner “Food with Integrity,” while sponsoring floats in the Pride and Rose parades and commissioning cute commercials. Big-name authors like Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison, and Julia Alvarez even wrote original stories that Chipotle published on their mugs and bags.
If you ate with us, according to Chipotle's pitch, you wouldn't just be eating Mexican food; you were eating something that was ethical, progressive, smart and cool: the burrito version of Erewhon.
Boatwright still believes Chipotle operated around that time. On the earnings call, he boasted that most of the brand's top customers were making more than $100,000 a year and “leaning toward younger…and we'll lean into that in the most meaningful way.” The irony of this is that the world of Mexican food is now much richer than when Chipotle initially broke into the United States.
Consumers don't want to waste their money on just good food in this economy. The most interesting places since the rise of social media are regional family restaurants. People who have money to spend happily do so on Michelin-starred restaurants or on special experiences: Consider that the upcoming $1,500 multi-course Mexican restaurant, celebrity chef René Redzepi plans to offer from a home in Silver Lake from March to June, sold out in minutes.
Mexican food is more fashionable than ever. Not Chipotle. The company's big mistake is that it has barely evolved and thinks that consumers will always continue with their substitute methods.
When I visited their Tustin branch, one wall featured the same kitschy wood-and-metal sculpture of a Mayan lord holding a burrito that I remembered during my first visit to Chipotle in 2009. The soundtrack (nonsensical hipster “Fly Like an Eagle,” a remix of Rare Earth’s “I Just Want to Celebrate,” “Bésame Mucho”) seemed more suited to a Pilates class at Leisure World rather than the few Gen Zers bifurcating his burrito. bowls. They were nearly outnumbered by Chipotle employees during their break.
I chose the chicken al pastor burrito because Boatwright proclaimed it to be “the most famous limited time offer in [our] story.” It initially hit the right sweet and slightly spicy notes that al pastor meat should have, but the flavor dissipated quickly because the marinade had not soaked the chicken pieces. Everything else I tried was equally disappointing. I had to season the sauce with a splash of Tabasco. The cheese started well but eventually solidified into something resembling a lukewarm paste. The fresh water was more cloying than refreshing.
Al & Bea's Bean and Cheese Burrito with Green Chile Sauce.
(Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times)
When you eat a huge burrito, the biggest dilemma is whether you should save half for later or eat the beast all at once. One inevitably chooses the latter and has no regrets. That's what happens when I devour a bean and cheese with salsa verde at Al & Bea's in Boyle Heights, the marvelous chile Relleno at Lucy's Drive-In in Mid-City, or the nicely sautéed carne asada burrito at King Taco at the flagship on the 710 Freeway in East Los Angeles.
I ate about half of Chipotle's chicken al pastor burrito before stopping. I didn't even take the leftovers because I knew they would just gather mold in the refrigerator.
This wasted lunch cost me $20. On the way home, I stopped to buy three beef tacos from a truck. Cheaper, tastier, better. Chipotle better hope their customers don't find out!
