People Are Using Chipotle Catering for Meal Prep—And Honestly, It’s Genius

Updated: Apr. 28, 2024

Try this new meal planning hack to skip expensive meal delivery services with Chiptole's catering boxes.

The latest meal planning trend is as surprising as it is genius. All over social media, people have been documenting how they’re using Chipotle catering to hack their weekly meal prep. Influencers post videos buying large, event-sized orders of protein, vegetables, cheese, tortillas and toppings to supplement their weekly cooking and stretch the family food budget. With the rising cost of meal delivery kits, this hack is definitely worth looking into.

Editor’s Tip: The famous Chipotle queso blanco is especially popular and personally, keeps us coming back for more. It’s creamy, cheesy, and perfectly spicy. The only downside? It will set you back a few bucks to add queso to your order.

What Is the Chipotle Catering Meal Prep Hack?

Quite simply, this hack involves ordering Chipotle catering boxes. Unlike individual orders at Chipotle, the catering boxes come with bulk packaged meats, veggies, cheeses and more that can be divided and reassembled in your own dishes (or ones supplied by Chipotle) to create prepared meals to store in the refrigerator.

TikTok creator Erika Gunn showed how she paid $109 to build 10 servings of food for her family (about $11 per meal). “You’d be super surprised. It comes with everything you need,” Gunn says in the video. In the video, she shows how she unboxed the various meats, vegetables and toppings to create several meal bowls that could be easily reheated and stored in the fridge.

@sidehustleagent Chipotle Catering for meal prep #mealprep #chipotle #easyonthego #tiktokhack ♬ Aesthetic – Tollan Kim

Another creator, Alicia Briggs, also tried the hack and posted about it, calling it “absolutely genius.” She says in her video, “I eat a lot of rice, and a lot of chicken, so why not add some mixed vegetables and sautéed fajitas to my meal?” Briggs ended up spending $139 for 10 servings. “This is going to make meals for a long time,” she says.

@thebrownmamimelts #greenscreen thank you to whoever shared this first…. Im hype! All this would have cost me more plus taken alot of time! #mealprep #weightloss #vsgcommunity #gymtok ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey


How much money people save by using Chipotle catering for weekly meal prep seems unclear. A meal delivery service like HelloFresh, for instance, starts at $7.49 per serving. So, if you use HelloFresh, you spend about $53.94 per week for three dishes a week for two people.

For now, Chipotle doesn’t seem to mind that its catering services are being used for meal prep purposes—the company has even added items to its menu recently based on TikTok creators and their hacked menu orders.

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