Los Angeles Man Plans to Spend $3,700 at Chipotle This Year

Eating one meal at Chipotle costs between $8 and $10, depending on whether you pay extra for guacamole. (Feel free to argue with me in the comments, but I don’t think Chipotle’s guac is that good.)

And, as Andrew Hawryluk has found out, eating at Chipotle once per day for 153 consecutive days (and counting) will set you back $1,567.

Hawryluk is a 23-year-old animator in Los Angeles, and is chronicling his “culinary endurance art piece” at Chipotlife. The piece began as a Lenten non-fasting exercise: “On February 18, 2015, the first day of Lent, I decided I would give up not eating Chipotle at least once per day.” Hawryluk enjoyed giving up not eating Chipotle so much that he decided to continue doing it, and he has no plans of ending the project any time soon.

Assuming Hawryluk keeps this up — and I bet he will — he’ll spend roughly $3,738 on Chipotle in the first fiscal year of this project. Is Chipotle going to put a significant dent in his grocery bill? Or is he actually saving money by eating at Chipotle?

Hawryluk writes that his non-Chipotle diet (which is to say, the other meals he eats in a day) is partially ketogenic and includes “a lot of chicken breast and steak. Some fruits and veggies here and there… which basically means whenever someone less lazy than me prepares them. Salmon once a week if life doesn’t get in the way.”

Well, okay. If he’s eating a lot of chicken breast and steak, his grocery bill is going to be a little higher than mine, which at this point mostly consists of bagged salad, Wheat Thins, hummus, and salsa. (Seattle is still kind of in a month-long heatwave, and I don’t want to cook.) A quick search of a few grocery comparison sites suggests that, in Los Angeles, a pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast is around $5.00, and I couldn’t find info on steak or salmon. Of course, he’s probably eating a little more for his non-Chipotle meals than just plain chicken breasts; there might be a side dish of some kind, or he might have some spices or marinade in there.

Plus he’s paying around 9 percent tax on that grocery bill, the same way he’s paying tax on his Chipotle. So if Hawryluk has a non-Chipotle meal cost of roughly $8 per meal — which feels like a bit of a reach but is not impossible — he could be breaking even with his decision to outsource one meal per day to Chipotle. Plus, he saves on the cost of food preparation and cleaning up.

At this point, I have $350 per month budgeted for groceries. (It really is just boxes and boxes of Wheat Thins.) At the end of my fiscal year, I’ll have spent around $4,200 on food, and Hawryluk will have spent $3,700 on Chipotle. He’ll outpace my grocery budget by far, since that $3,700 will only take up a portion of his meal costs, but I bet his own food costs won’t be too affected by “the Chipotle factor.”

Hat tip to Business Insider, where I first learned about Hawryluk’s project; to the rest of us, would you be willing to eat one Chipotle meal per day for an entire year? I don’t think I’d be able to stomach it.

Photo credit: Mike Mozart

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.