Recently, the popular Mexican restaurant chain, Chipotle, announced it was raising it menu prices, People reports. The move, according to Chipotle, is to cover the cost of an increased hourly wage for its workers.
But is that really the case? While you may have noticed Chipotle's popular meal items suddenly becoming more expensive, is the company reflecting the whole truth of the matter?
The company is making moves to increase its hourly wage from $13 to $15. In order to cover this, they say that they've raised the prices on their menu by about 4%.
This is all to incentivize its workforce to stay on the job.
"It feels like the right thing, at the right time, and it feels like the industry is now going to have to either do something similar or play some kind of catch-up. Otherwise you'll just lose the staffing again," the CFO of Chipotle said in a virtual conference.
The CEO of Chipotle, Brian Niccol, went through with the decision despite initially being hesitant toward it. "It made sense in this scenario to invest in our employees and get these restaurants staffed and make sure that we have the pipeline of people to support our growth," he told NBC.
Knowing that corporate makes a lot more money annually than any of their restaurant workers, it brings up the question of whether or not the move to raise prices was absolutely necessary.
Many people have their doubts and expressed them on Twitter.
Apparently Chipotle recently relocated its headquarters from Denver, Colorado and New York City to Orange County in California, a move that cost the company somewhere close to $100 million.
That's a lot of money, even for a corporation like Chipotle.
The reason why they moved their company headquarters in the first place was at the request of Niccol, who has only been CEO of the company for a few years and did not want to relocate to Denver.
Alex Press on Twitter discusses the move, as well as the fact that Niccol's pay has more than doubled over the course of the pandemic. This in juxtaposition to the price increase and the company's statement just doesn't sit right with people.
With growing debates on minimum wages and what constitutes a living wage, this situation may just add fuel to the fire. But knowing that it's not as simple as increasing prices to cover a higher wage kind of changes things.
Blaming higher wages for the price increase only seems like a way to cover up all the other executive expenses the company has been dealing with.
h/t: People.
