Chipotle Customer Refusal Controversy

Submission 14,529

Overview

Chipotle Customer Refusal Controversy refers to an incident at a Minnesota Chipotle restaurant, where in which a viral video shows several African American customers being refused service by a Chipotle manager who claims the customers had stolen food in the past. The customers in the video denied the accusations and called the manager's actions racist. Chipotle later fired the manager; however, after a number of tweets by one of the customers validated the manager's claims re-surfaced, Chipotle announced that they may be reconsidering her termination.

Background

On November 16th, 2018, Twitter ^[1] user @Masudaliii posted a series of videos in which he and four other black customers being asked to pay upfront for food, rather than Chipotle's usual process of providing service and then asking the customer to pay. The captioned video, "Can a group of young well established African American get a bite to eat after a long workout session. @ChipotleTweets??" The initial post received more than 31,000 retweets, 72,000 likes and 7 million views (mirror below).

Development

That day, Chipotle's official Twitter^[2] account tweeted at Masudaliii. They said, "Masudaliii what happened here is not how our employees should treat our customers. We are committed to treating all of our guests fairly and with respect. The manager has been terminated and the restaurant has been retrained so this doesn’t happen again. We'll be back in touch." The tweet received more than 1,800 retweets and 11,000 likes in three days (shown below).

Two days later, Twitter^[3] user @BenjaminEnfield tweeted, "Let’s not forget these dudes are KNOWN for dine & dash before y’all go racial about this…." The tweet received more than 1,600 retweets and 5,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, left). @BenjaminEnfield proceeded to post since-deleted tweets by @Masudaliii boasting about dining and dashing (examples below, center and right).

Following the posts, Chipotle responded to the tweets. They wrote, "Our actions were based on the facts known to us immediately after the incident. We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation, we’ll re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it." The tweet received more than 450 retweets and 3,200 likes in 24 hours (shown below).