It's actually been this way for a while. The top 10% of American earners do half of all consumer spending. A massive amount of the economy has shifted to reflect this. Businesses are often targeting business to business sales rather than business to customer. Pay to win video games use free players as content for whales to play through. And if you're selling physical goods, you're probably either doing it as cheaply as possible, or absolutely gouging the assholes you're selling to (think ikea vs Kohler's premium brand, for which a lamp costs 5 figures and the website doesn't gave prices listed).

We pre-cook as much as we can in Asian restaurants. The wok isn't magic, the chicken/beef/pork is already 75% cooked.

My issue with chipotle has always been that the food is lukewarm.

I’m not paying 20 dollars for a lukewarm, lightly seasoned burrito.

Now you go to chipotle and pay $20 for a burrito and a soda. Still fast, still decent enough (at least the one near me), but $20 is highway robbery.

Chipotle Burrito and a small fountain soda is $14 in my area. Its certainly risen in price over the last 6 years.

The problem is that Chipotle was never really fast food, they were one of the pioneers of the Fast Casual concept, where it was good food, served quickly, but not necessarily cheap. They never really intended to compete against McDonalds head to head. They wanted to be something different.

Chipotle wasn't that fast. They were locally blacklisted by a lot of doordash drivers due to the wait.

it used to be 7$ for a giant burrito, now its almost half the size and more than double the cost.

They do get it, better than most customers.

The entire point is maximizing profit. If you can charge fewer people more for the same product, you're doing less while making more.

This is just the result of crapitalism. It will never be a system where everyone can afford Chipotle.

But it's such delicious (and overpriced) rice & beans.

Yeah i don't eat there often so it was quite apparent the last couple times that they've removed everything with flavor and substituted it for extra rice and beans, while charging more for it. My city has dozens and dozens of Mexican restaurants and food trucks that offer way better taste and portions for way less money.

higher wages are not the solution; universal basic income is. higher wages just mean it's even more difficult for companies to higher employees, which means there will be fewer jobs overall. also, you're excluding people who are unable to work that way.

I remember when Reddit was flooded with posts about how great Chipotle was. Felt a little manufactured; their food was fine, but nothing better than I can get from a halfway decent local place.

I love the taste of supply chain optimization.

and they charge extra for sloppy gaucomole, you might as well buy your own.

Also $11 for a burrito? Yeah, miss me with that bullshit. I'm thankful for chipotle keeping me full while I was in college but shit is literally double the price it was then.

I think folks in our age group have cut more aggressively. More responsibilities

My household and I weren’t able to eat at a restaurant since before COVID hit, even fast food had jacked their prices up too high. That’s only just now starting to change because we’ve left the US.