Chipotle Mexican Grill — Restaurant in City of Ithaca

I think that with such a busy location, they should focus on hiring more staff instead of overworking their current employees. I have personally seen some of the employees struggling to keep up with the online orders and their promise time, and having become accustomed to customers waiting for up to an hour or even longer. Sometimes as often as once a week. Occasionally there is a sign on the door saying no online orders, but other times customers have to wait and become frustrated while disgruntled and physically beaten employees are trying to make 10+ entrees every ten minutes by themselves for their 6 hour shift to keep up with their promise time while grabbing food for their line and the front line. In the mean time, if the cashier isnt trained as well on the front line, the customers wouldnt get mad at them if they can not keep up since they couldnt get help from the person who was required to try and please the customers that ordered online. Did you know that sometimes they keep the online orders running with 3 people in the store for over an hour at a time? Maybe its understandable on a slower day, but everyone knows weekends look a little rough here. Also, imagine days where the person doing online orders has a catering order to do. Some of these demands are unrealistic and it's a little depressing to watch unfold. I have heard customers complain to me about waiting 3 hours for an online order that they were promised a specific time for. How can this store's upper manaegment allow this when they use the word "promise" time? I asked to have the online orders postponed for a few hours because there were 2 people running the store with me on a busy day. No response. If they would understand that the employees can't keep up when they are short staffed, then they could close online orders for a little bit and also help out customer satisfaction. If they had more time to focus on management, the current management would have time to clean up and make the place look more presentable for more staff to potentially be hired. They would most likely be better off if they focused on their turnover rate (how quickly people get hired and leave) and customer satisfaction instead of working the employees to the bone when they are short staffed. That way, customers don't expect to wait an hour for their food from a corporation that prides themselves on customer service 🤷‍♂️ I enjoyed my job here for the past two years but I had 4 different General Managers and they had 4 different bosses for this store since I had been hired. I wish their emplpyee relations were better because I have a very hard time staying here and trying to motivate myself to help the restaurant, when things have not changed for a while. The fundamentals are key. Sales will take a hit for a little bit, but don't you think it will be worth it in the long run to keep the employees that genuinely wanted to try? Some employees work 10 hours before they can take their break sometimes to try and help this restaurant but the bar to keep up is just physically too high some days. Hoping for the best for the future of...

I've been to a lot of Chipotle locations in the past decade or so, and they've all been great and relatively similar experiences. This one is an exception, and I'm finished giving them second chances.

I'm not sure what's going on here, I'm thinking probably bad management, but it's been a terrible experience every time. The food here is fine. The trick is actually getting the food and in a reasonable amount of time.

Several times they have been out of chicken, holding up the already long slow moving line for 30 or 40 minutes. The last time we went here, they had a full grill of chicken. It finished cooking, they took it in the back, and then it took another 20 minutes for the cut chicken to come out. I have no idea what they were doing back in there between the time the chicken was finished cooking and the time it came out. There was a literal crowd of people by the register waiting for mobile orders as well. I assume they all wanted chicken.

Today we gave it another shot and ran into a similar situation. They actually had the cooked chicken ready to go. I could see it in the container, but for some reason the worker decided to put more raw meat down on the grill instead of cutting the chicken to get the line moving again. The line was held up and almost out the door at this point, and the worker looked like he had no intention of cutting that chicken any time soon. I remembered the last time and just decided to leave after already waiting literally 40 minutes. Chipotle is good but not worth waiting this long for. Both tonight and the last time we went, they were out of white rice as well.

In addition to the long wait time, this particular location is very unclean. The garbage cans were overflowing so much that people started putting their trash in the tray return area on top of the trash cans. There was food all over most of the tables. It seems like it would be a trivial thing for a worker to take 10 minutes to clear the trash and wipe the tables.

I think one of the issues here is bad time management, and I'm not sure if that's coming from the manager or just the individual workers. They seem to 100% prioritize mobile orders so that the people who actually come into the store have to wait forever to get their food. It is my opinion that if someone has the convenience of not waiting in line for their food, there should be the trade-off of waiting longer. If someone puts forth the effort of actually driving to a location and waiting in line, they should be prioritized.

Skip this Chipotle and just go to Moe's or Viva or literally anywhere else within a 10...

An absolute embarrassment to the company and chain branding as a whole. Lines stand still for 20+ minutes at a time as they never are anticipating the rush, have a plethora of employees who will actively just walk in the back and shoot the breeze while customers are waiting (you can see them through the doorway). For those actually ON the line, online orders always take precedent over in-store orders and they will SIT on the counter waiting to be finished getting cold. Then they do the same to in store orders, getting as many as 4-5 orders lined up still waiting to be finished. Not a single worker seems to care or take it even remotely seriously so why even bother. Literally had a dude get bumped to the front of the line, infront of at least 10 other people because he knew the cashier, and she literally got off register to make his food, and ring him out ahead of other waiting people. We even literally had a short convo about it because it was so ridiculous. The store is always dirty, tables are literally never clean, they have left over food on them and the utensils/napkins/condoments and drink supplies are nearly empty every visit. Not to mention the nozzles on the coke machine clearly arent being cleaned at night. It’s obvious not only do the basic employees not care, but neither does the KM, Store Manager, District Manager, or anyone else involved in the representation of the Chipotle brand as a whole. On top of that, its pretty insane to watch your bowl be made on the first half of the line and watch three other employees gossip to a customer they know personally about IRL events and not get rung out, while the bowl sicks getting colder as no one comes to ask for the back half of the ingredients. Now I know this is a two way street, so maybe if the employees were paid a little better and incentivized to actually care the service...