By Sam Tabahriti; Business Insider

Bernie Sanders has called out Chipotle on Twitter over the rising cost of its meals and accused it of price gouging. It comes after the fast-food chain released its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

The US senator tweeted on Friday: “Corporate greed is Chipotle increasing its profits by 181% last year to $764 million, giving its CEO a 137% pay raise to $38 million in 2020 and blaming the rising cost of a burrito on a minimum wage worker who got a 50 cent pay raise. That’s not inflation. That’s price gouging.”

Chipotle did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

The company’s earnings reports showed a total revenue increase of 22% to $2 billion compared with the previous year. Chipotle’s earnings report focused on revenue, rather than the profit that Sanders referenced.

According to the Macrotrends website, Chipotle’s operating income for the twelve months ending September 30, 2021, was $0.764 billion, which represented a 181.3% increase year-on-year. Operating income refers to the amount of profit realized from a business’s operations once essential expenses have been deducted. 

In June, Insider reported on the news that CEO Brian Niccol made $38 million in 2020. Niccol’s compensation was 2,898 times more than the median Chipotle worker’s $13,127 salary in 2020, based on an employee working 25 hours a week in Illinois, the report added. 

When the earnings report was released on Tuesday, Niccol said in an accompanying statement that “2021 was an outstanding year for Chipotle, highlighting the strength and resiliency of our brand.”

Insider’s Huileng Tan reported Wednesday that the company could raise prices again this year after a 4% price hike in December.