Chipotle gave huge payouts to its CEO and shareholders, then blamed workers for price increases – here’s what’s really going on

Chipotle gave huge payouts to its CEO and shareholders, then blamed workers for price increases – here’s what’s really going on

Last week, about a small menu price increase at a fast-casual food chain. Written by Julie Creswell, the piece began, "Executives at Chipotle said on Tuesday that the fast-food chain had raised menu prices by about 4% to cover the cost of the increased employee wages." Headlined "Chipotle will increase its menu prices as labor costs rise," this story is confusing for a few reasons. Firstly, the New York Times is not traditionally in the business of reporting on price increases in restaurants. And a 4% increase doesn't seem newsworthy at all “” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol admits in the last paragraph of the piece that the increase amounts to "quarters and dimes that we're layering in" to existing prices. So the only reason this story could possibly be considered worthy of the Times's world-famous "All the News That's Fit to Print" slogan is Chipotle's claim that the price increases were directly caused by increased worker pay. The chain recently “” but only in a fraction of its restaurants. Creswell writes that the "pay increases apply only to [Chipotle's] 650 company-owned restaurants; the vast majority of its nearly 14,000 restaurants in the United States are independently owned." So with all