September 15, 2004 - Ed Prices Burritos

Burritos are the perfect food. Just think about it. A warm, soft four tortilla on the outside, and inside – well, the sky’s the limit. You can start the day with an egg, ham and cheese burrito. For lunch, maybe something vegetarian – you know, just to keep it light. Then for dinner, chorizo, carne asada, grilled chicken, rice, black beans, pinto beans, cheese, sour cream, guacamole – the whole enchilada, er, burrito.

Yesterday the dedicated staff of edhat.com ran for the border, or more precisely ran from the order.  We walked into a number of Mexican food restaurants, perused the menus and walked out. No order. You see, we were pricing burritos.  In past Edhat research projects, we have bought the fries, the soup, the water, etc. But with burritos, the consequences would have been much worse.  Did we mention that we were pricing bean and cheese burritos?

Well, our travel plans were a quick jaunt up and down Milpas Street and over to the Mesa, then a trip downtown to check out the burrito brokers on State Street.  Milpas Street, as you know, is loaded with Mexican Food Restaurants.  In fact, besides fast food – KFC, Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, Dominos, Little Caesars, Subway, etc., that’s all there are.

The traffic messed up our plans. First of all, it turns out that Milpas Street is being repaved – reduced to one lane in each direction at one point.  We were able to go down one side of Milpas, but didn’t have the patience for the other.  So, we headed to the Mesa.  Guess what? The Albertson’s parking lot, where Super Cuca’s is, was also being repaved. It took the dedicated staff almost five minutes from when we made an ill-fated turn into the parking lot, until we could extract ourselves from the tangle of cars piled up next to the yellow taped-off area. There was honking involved.

Sick of traffic and tired of looking at salsa bars, red and green flags, and beer signs, the dedicated staff headed back to the office where we could use a phone. The people answering on the other end were more than willing to share their bean and cheese pricing with us.  Sometimes it got a bit confusing as to whether or not tax was included.

Everybody answered the phone except Freebirds.

In our study, we found the cheapest burrito, by far, to be at Taco Bell. There, for less than a buck, you can get beans, cheese, and a tortilla.  People do.  Other places charge somewhere between $3.00 and $4.00.   Presumably they are bigger than the Taco Bell variety. BTW, a Taco Bell bean burrito (sin queso) has 370 calories, 1080 mg of sodium and 54 grams of carbs.  It is logical to assume that the bigger burritos have bigger numbers.

The average price of a burrito was $3.54.  That is the price we used to choose the winner to our daily contest.   The average price without the Taco Bell outlier was $3.76.  Here is a list of all the burritos we priced.

Edhat subscribers were in tune with burrito pricing. The average guess was $3.44. Benjamin was the winner of our contest.  He guessed $3.52 and wins an Edhat t-shirt and hat.

So, now that we priced burritos (and found it pretty consistent all over town), the dedicated staff was wondering where subscribers thought the best burritos were.  Send us an email and we will post your comments on our Ed’s Soap Box.

Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest

We want to hear from you ... tell us what you think of this tidbit