Chipotle brings back smoked brisket for a limited time. Then an employee shows the price for a bowl with extra meat: ‘Think twice before getting that’

Chipotle has seasonal options that occasionally return to the menu, and smoked brisket is one of them. For some customers, this might mean it’s time to head to the nearest Chipotle to get a meal with brisket before it’s gone.

However, Lupe Garcia (@lupegarcia7) is warning customers that they might want to reconsider ordering brisket this year, saying in her video, “Think twice before getting that extra brisket.”

The problem isn’t the quality of the brisket. Instead, it’s the price of getting extra brisket that might make customers think twice about their purchase.

At Lupe’s store, extra brisket costs $8.45

Lupe’s video showed her entering an order into her store’s point-of-sale (POS) system. She entered a brisket bowl and showed the total was $15.20. That alone isn’t too far off from the pricing of bowls with other meat, as it’s about a few dollars more depending on your location.

Then, Lupe added extra meat, often called double meat on the app, to the bowl, which cost an additional $8.45, bringing the total after tax to $26.25 for one burrito bowl.

If you go into the Chipotle app to place an order for a burrito bowl, you’ll see that the usual cost for extra meat is around $5 for other meats, with beef options costing the most.

A commenter chimed in with: “Someone came in and got 2 brisket bowls, both with extra brisket, and the total was $50.20.” This is pretty close to the amount Lupe showed, but it seems that the commenter might be in a location with slightly lower costs.

Beef prices are at a record high

The comments included Chipotle employees worried about telling customers the high totals for items with brisket. One said, “Genuinely feared for my life when I was ringing people up.”

Another commenter said, “I’ve been telling everyone who asks for double that an extra portion costs like $8 and only one person has followed through getting it.”

Chipotle isn’t the only place with prices going up, as one commenter, who claimed to manage a BBQ place, said, “As a man who manages a local BBQ joint, I actually feel so bad when people come in for lunch, and their meal costs $29 because beef prices are literally SO BAD.”

As that comment said, it’s likely that part of the high brisket price at Chipotle, and the beef items at other restaurants, comes from the record-high beef prices. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $6.75. This is up by 20 cents from a year ago, and about $2.04 higher than five years ago.

Unfortunately, it might be a while before those prices start to fall, if they fall at all, as an article by The Independent covers the issues that farmers and beef producers are facing right now, including a cattle shortage, droughts, and high energy costs.

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