Nationwide restaurant chain Chipotle stunned some customers recently when they realized their receipts showed an odd thing: the total of their order was rounded up to the nearest cent.
Chipotle says it’s not part of some scam to cheat people out of their hard-earned money, but rather a way to be more efficient and cut down on long lines. They also round down, for the record. However, most customers feel like they’ve been had, as the restaurant didn’t necessarily make this practice common knowledge.
“The idea is simply to limit the possible combinations of change on cash transactions to keep the lines moving quickly in high volume areas,” spokesman Chris Arnold said. “It was never our intention to have a policy that was confusing or misleading.”
Now, some locations are choosing to only round down, not up, but the question remains as to whether or not it’s the best practice, and if it actually saves that much time. Some people are also wondering if the penny isn’t more of a nuisance than a help and think we should just do away with the coin altogether, like Canada did earlier this year. If that’s the case, we’ll be seeing a lot more restaurants taking a page from Chipotle’s book when it comes to charging for meals.