Commentary: Chipotle just saw its worst year ever. It may not get any better

Before me was a lunch as big and hefty as a brick, wrapped in gold-colored foil that gleamed with the promise of a delicious meal.

What I was about to try was no culinary treasure, though; it was a burrito from Chipotle.

Chicken al pastor smushed into cilantro rice. Sour cream and cheese to add tang; pinto beans and red salsa for heartiness. Chips and a cup of Tex-Mex style queso as a snack, and a cardamon-spiked mandarin agua fresca to wash down everything.

It was maybe the fifth time I had ever eaten at the Newport Beach-based fast-casual chain because the idea of spending money on pricey, whatever-tasting burritos was never my thing. That put me in the minority of a generation of eaters who transformed what started in 1993 as a small Denver restaurant into a multibillion multinational with nearly 4,000 locations.

So why I was at a Tustin Chipotle on a recent drizzly day? I wanted to figure out why more Americans are starting to see things my way. As my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reported last week, 2025 was the company’s worst year ever.

Same-store sales fell for the first time since Chipotle became publicly traded two decades ago. Shares fell 37%, a plunge that spoke to trying times in an industry that continues to see rising costs and plummeting consumer spending create a combo plate from hell.

Chipotle Chief Executive Scott Boatwright admitted in an earnings call with investors that he expects 2026 to remain flat because the company’s “landscape is shifting.” He nevertheless tried to highlight what he sees as glimmers of hope. New equipment that will lead to “juicier steak and chicken that is cooked to perfection every time.” A relaunched rewards program. More than 300 new locations scheduled to open in 2026, including the first-ever Chipotle in Mexico.

“As we look forward to the next 20 years,” Boatwright’s concluded in his opening remarks, “I’ve never been more confident in the strength of this brand and our ability to win.”

As I read his thoughts while readying to dig into my lunch, I almost felt bad for Boatwright, whose 2025 base salary was $1.1 million, per Securities and Exchange Commission filings. It’s as if he’s forgotten what Chipotle peddles — Mexican food.

For over 140 years, restaurateurs have become millionaires capitalizing on the insatiable American appetite for nearly any foodstuff from south of the border. But as all empires inevitably do, the good times stop. Waves of items — chile, tamales in a can, fajitas, hard-shell tacos, frozen margaritas — that were once considered “authentic” are now so thoroughly assimilated into the American diet that they’re now considered as quaint as chicken pot pie and Limburger sandwiches.

Few Mexican restaurant chains in the United States — really, just Taco Bell — have escaped this destiny. Boatwright would be wise to heed this history and either take Chipotle into 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 out of a former ice cream shop, he was following the example of many before him who looked at Mexicans making delicious food and figured they could do better and become rich off it. In Chipotle’s case, Ells freely admits his muse was taquerías in San Francisco’s Mission District that prepped burritos in the assembly line manner and size his company would soon imitate.

“Each one at five bucks, they’re making some good money,” he told me in my 2012 book “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.”

Chipotle rose at the perfect time and place, as massive burritos spread across the country during the 1990s and 2000s, especially settling in college towns and gentrifying neighborhoods where young people wanted fast and filling Mexican food but slightly more elevated than fast food. Ells’ true innovation was turning eating at Chipotle into a virtue-signaling experience. It contracted with boutique farmers for meats and produce under the tag line “Food With Integrity,” while sponsoring floats at Pride and Rose parades and commissioning cute commercials. Big-name authors like Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison and Julia Alvarez even wrote original short stories that Chipotle published on its cups and bags.

If you ate with us, went Chipotle’s pitch, you weren’t just eating Mexican food; you were eating something that was ethical, progressive, smart and cool — the burrito version of Erewhon.

Boatwright still thinks Chipotle operates in that era. In the earnings call, he bragged that the majority of the brand’s core customers made over $100,000 a year and “skewed younger … and we’re gonna lean into that in the most meaningful way.” The irony of that is that the world of Mexican food is now vastly richer than when Chipotle initially stormed the U.S.

Eaters don’t want to waste their money on just OK food in this economy. The coolest spots since the rise of social media are mom-and-pop regional eateries. People with cash to spend gladly do so on Michelin-starred restaurants or special experiences: Consider that the coming $1,500 multi-course Mexican diner celebrity chef René Redzepi plans to offer out of a home in Silver Lake from March to June sold out within minutes.

Mexican food is hipper than ever. Not Chipotle. The company’s big mistake is that it has barely evolved, thinking consumers will always stick with its ersatz ways.

When I visited its Tustin branch, a wall featured the same cheesy wood-and-metal sculpture of a Mayan lord holding a burrito I remembered during my first Chipotle visit back in 2009. The soundtrack — hipster nonsense, “Fly Like an Eagle,” a remix of Rare Earth’s “I Just Want to Celebrate,” “Bésame Mucho” — seemed better suited to a Pilates class at Leisure World instead of the few Gen Zers who forked at their burrito bowls. They were nearly outnumbered by Chipotle employees on their break.

I went with the chicken al pastor burrito because Boatwright proclaimed it was “the most celebrated limited-time offer in [our] history.” It initially hit the right sweet, slightly piquant notes that al pastor meat should — but the flavor quickly dissipated because the marinade hadn’t soaked through the chicken chunks. Everything else I tasted was as underwhelming. I had to spice up the salsa with drizzles of Tabasco. The queso started fine but eventually congealed into something that approximated lukewarm paste. The agua fresca 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 doesn’t regret it. That’s what happens when I scarf down a bean and cheese with green sauce at Al & Bea’s in Boyle Heights, the chile relleno wonder from Lucy’s Drive-In in Mid-City, or King Taco’s nicely sauced carne asada burrito at the flagship off the 710 Freeway in East Los Angeles.

I ate about half of Chipotle’s chicken al pastor burrito before stopping. I didn’t even to take any leftovers because I knew they would just gather mold in the fridge.

This waste of a lunch set me back $20. On the way home, I stopped to buy three carne tacos from a truck. Cheaper, tastier, better. Chipotle better hope its customers don’t discover it!