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I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

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Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#211

Post by robocat »

crooked-v wrote: post #38
brewdad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not likely. The issues were far deeper than cash flow. The new business was primarily one and done visitors anyway. By the time you've made the trip to the foodie Mecca of Portland and traveled across town to try the "country's best burger" would you really be deterred by a $15 price tag vs $10? How much would you have to raise the price to make that work? How do you do this without forever alienating your loyal loca…

Charge normal prices for anyone who shows an ID with an address in the state, double or triple it for anyone else.

I think the article mentioned that the number of people coming in from from the suburbs were also a problem.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#212

Post by lotsofpulp »

sixQuarks wrote: post #190
mabbo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; If you have a five hour lineup for a burger, you need to raise your prices at least a little bit. You'll make more money overall, and your customers will be happy.

Solution may have been to charge very high prices, with discounts if you show drivers license with local address. Then share part of the extra revenue with employees

That's introducing complexity and ability to game the rules for no reason. The solution will come about naturally, either people realize the time waiting for "top ranked" places are not worth it, or other restauranteurs will figure out there is profit to be made and open more restaurants.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#213

Post by jbob2000 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #207
tptacek wrote: post #135

It's hard to blame Kevin Alexander for this, because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would. If he wanted to, he could have asked not to be featured in the list, and Alexander probably would have complied; otherwise, he could have done other things to make it clear to his customers that he wasn't interested in fulfilling the role the ranking carved out for him. We see this effect in Ch…

> It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore Worse. The people who eat there change from those who enjoy food to those who enjoy the idea. That takes the right kind of pressure off the chef and owners and substitutes it with the wrong kind, e.g. Instagrammability.

I was just going to say - if you get some viral exposure as a business, you get customers who only want to be associated with something popular. It's probably an odd feeling; sure you're successful, but it's not because of your hard work, it's because of the journalist's.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#214

Post by rb808 »

LargeWu wrote: post #79

One of the sad things about this sort of list is that it's literally just one guy's opinion. Sure, he tried all the burgers. I'm sure all the burgers in the top 100 are good burgers, but there's probably very little separating them except some personal preference. For example, I probably wouldn't have rated this place as high because I don't care for grilled onions on burgers; I would much rather have raw onions. The…

Even sadder is that it probably depends on a lot on the day and time you go. Its not like you get the same experience every time you go to that restaurant.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#215

Post by phlakaton »

You know, I'll bet a lot of you are thinking: "Oh, this is just a scalability problem." :-)

The key is that Mr. Stanich wants to preferably serve his locals. This rules out simple approaches like raising prices to astronomical levels or requiring reservations a month in advance.

A ticketing system (or reserve in-person day-of), plus a set of reserved tables for locals, seems like the most workable of the approaches here. The franchising option also looks tempting, but I expect that little of what got this burger to #1 would survive the transition.

Hey, any chance we can get Mr. Stanich to open a second location down here in Santa Clara? Asking for a friend. ;-)

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#216

Post by lotsofpulp »

radlad wrote: post #193
afterburner wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customers you made money from when you're starting out don't have to be the same customers you make money from when your restaurant hits the big time.

There's risk associated in shunning your existing clientele in hopes of attracting a newer, more premium clientele.

If there's enough demand, then it should be possible to increase capacity.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#217

Post by skrebbel »

tanderson92 wrote: post #197
tptacek wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that to a point, but if what you're serving is simply a well-executed diner burger, then, like I said, there's a ceiling. You can't charge $30 for that. Or, you can, but you'll create more problems than you'll solve. This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what S…

Thanks for this comment thread, I found it really insightful. Nuance on HN?!

> Nuance on HN?!

Where else‽

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#218

Post by blt »

tptacek wrote: post #189
mabbo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; If you have a five hour lineup for a burger, you need to raise your prices at least a little bit. You'll make more money overall, and your customers will be happy.

You can do that to a point, but if what you're serving is simply a well-executed diner burger, then, like I said, there's a ceiling. You can't charge $30 for that. Or, you can, but you'll create more problems than you'll solve. This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what S…

I think this is the In-n-out effect - people who grew up on it see it as a vastly superior version of McDs, Wendy's etc for the same price, and are understandably effusive about this. But visitors expect something profound instead of a well executed fast food style burger.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#219

Post by tracker1 »

There's a BBQ place here in the warehouse area south of the Phoenix airport similar to the described. Every day, at open, there's already 45-90 minutes of people in line. I've been by several restaurants that face similar issues.

In my mind, no restaurant is worth an hour wait before you can even get an order in. I'd just assume go to the #2/3 on the list over facing that.

On the one hand, it's nice when you find a place with really good food that makes it into your normal rotation. And you're really happy when they're always busy. But it's when you get a line out the door and around the block that you start to look elsewhere, and sometimes you miss it.

The Chino Bandito on 19th and Greenway was a bit like that at lunch for a long time... Of course I discovered the mediterranian place right next door to it (man, it takes nerve to open a restaurant right next to a hot spot). But the food there is really good (one of the better options in phx) and it's usually not too busy.

Of course I've seen the reverse too. A place with incredible food that you love that never seems to find it's regular footing. Often due to an awkward location more than any other reason I can think of. Just as often as I'd see a place I love blow up, I've gone back to a place I haven't been to in a year or two (usually in an area I'm just not near very often) only to find it's gone.

I don't know what the answer is, as commercial interests will usually corrupt what starts out really cool. I still use yelp, but the horror stories about their pushy sales really leaves me wondering.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#220

Post by mabbo »

tptacek wrote: post #189
mabbo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; If you have a five hour lineup for a burger, you need to raise your prices at least a little bit. You'll make more money overall, and your customers will be happy.

You can do that to a point, but if what you're serving is simply a well-executed diner burger, then, like I said, there's a ceiling. You can't charge $30 for that. Or, you can, but you'll create more problems than you'll solve. This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what S…

There may indeed be a ceiling. It's not even near whatever he's charging that leads to a 5 hour lineup.

Similar situation, my mother is a lawyer mostly handling wills/estates and real estate deals. Small town law firm, sole practitioner. She's got too many clients, too much work, and she hates turning people away. She's got a small army of secretaries working their asses off. It's good business, but she wants to do less so that eventually she can retire.

She's trying a new strategy: raising prices every 3 months until there's exactly as much work as she wants to do. If things get a bit dry, she can lower prices a bit again. But by fluctuating ever so slightly, she can choose how much work she wants to do.

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