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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

#231

Post by jungler »

moate wrote: post #185
elvinyung wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair; I think I'm slightly more-pissed-than-usual about this just because it's very easy to dismissive of ramen, especially in North America, because all people remember are those deep-fried dehydrated brick fixtures of every college dorm. It is precisely that it doesn't look like traditional fine dining, or even New American cuisine, that I think a lot of people think it's nothing worth looking at. It's reall…

Oh GOD, you want to get me pissed bring up that cry baby Chang. I could rant. But I won't. Listen, I get it. I spend 8 hours every few months boiling off a massive pot of bones and feet to make my own ramen broth to store in my freezer. I get that it's easy to dismiss it soup and noodles as just "some soup and noodles". Food is usually about what you know and are familiar with. It's about comfort for most people, but…

There's definitely an element of performativity in food that strikes me every time I see cooking shows.

It can be great food, but you're going to poop it out the same as anything else. So what are you paying for, when you get above a minimum bar of nutrition, sanitation, and taste? An experience. Fashion. Hospitality. With high end ingredients and techniques, scarcity.

And I can see the appeal of chasing after "the best" on both ends. Something that is not just a great experience once, but great on every plate, every service. It's not unlike other aesthetic and cultural pursuits in that at the higher end it becomes about the coloration that you prefer, and most objective measures fall apart.

But then most people aren't even able to describe what they want aesthetically, so a ranking substitutes. And when it's a ranking of something familiar and popular like burgers or noodle soups, it's simultaneously more interesting(more people have comparable experiences) and easier to dismiss(there are many great options).

Earlier this year I visited Tokyo and decided to find "the best burger" (according to some guide) and the place I ultimately visited was, indeed, quite good by any standard, and it wasn't busy or unusually expensive, even. Was it the best? I have absolutely no idea. But I get to tell a story about visiting "the best" regardless.

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

#232

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ams6110 wrote: post #180
dcow wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea: zero profit capitalism. Sure some people would abuse savings accounts more than others, but taxing standing profits on a gradually increasing scale the longer they stand (sure the market already does this at a minute level, but it's not enough to deter wealth hoarding) seems like an effective way to solve the wealth extraction problem corporations introduce.

Zero-profit capitalism has another name: hobby.

If it pays for your living it's not a hobby.

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

#233

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mujoco wrote: post #46
narrator wrote: post #22

There's an easy solution to having too much business : raise prices. I think this is one of A16Z's big insights into most businesses[1]: they don't charge enough. If you look at the best restaurants in America like the French Laundry in Napa, they charge astronomical ridiculous prices and they still have reservations for months ahead of time. The oldest restaurant in Paris requires you put down a 400 euro deposit jus…

Raising prices would reduce the volume of customers, so the restaurant could maintain its quality standard, but Stanich felt his mission was to give back to the local community of regular diners. He didn't want to price out regular, repeat customers from the neighborhood and have only tourists eating there.

And how did that work out?

Maybe a better approach would be to jack prices up sky high for tourists and open another burger joint with a different name for locals.

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

#234

Post by gkoberger »

joezydeco wrote: post #221

Let's hear from a local about what really happened to Stanich's: https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-not-t... "Anecdotally, I went to Stanich's a few weeks before the shutdown. They certainly weren't getting overrun with customers at that point. The place was maybe a quarter full on a Friday night, and it was filthy. Dust everywhere, dishes left on tables, stains on the floor, the crust on the ketc…

Nobody thinks too much business is what hurt Stanich's. Rather, it was too much attention. The pressure of a small-town short order cook all of a sudden having to live up to what Stanich's "could" and "should" be.

One day, he's making the same burgers his dad was 70 years ago. The next, he's getting franchise offers and vitriolic reviews and personal issues. It seems he started cleaning and renovations, and just couldn't bring himself to reopen... much like how many of us here fail to launch startups.

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

#235

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

afterburner wrote: post #195
hedvig wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply side economics dominates. There is no such thing as authentic demand.

Isn't the lesson here rather that monopolies, good management, and quality products are good for business?

Shake Shack is more about hyping just-ok products. There are better (and cheaper) burgers to be had without the megadosing of salt to compensate for a mediocre blend. They keep the seats filled because they worked the hype machine and the tourists flock there.

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

#236

Post by ryanwaggoner »

nightfly wrote: post #130
hinkley wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago I worked at a place downtown that was blocks away from a Thai restaurant that had a line out the door every day. The place was frenetic, like a zoo. The staff in the kitchen were running around like maniacs, making food as fast as they possibly could. The pictures on the menu above the register were all faded with age. The food was merely okay. The story was that it was cheap and decent, not good. But as I…

$2 a plate can be enough to price it out of being a reasonable regular option for people. A food cart in a pod near my work moved into a just-as-close physical restaurant and raised their prices by about $2 plate and I went from eating there once every week or two, to maybe once a year.

You're making the point for them...adding even $1 to the price will ratchet the demand down to reasonable levels, and you'll end up making a little more money with lower stress levels.

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

#237

Post by ubercow13 »

afterburner wrote: post #191
munificent wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a classic humans are rational actors and spherical volumes in empty space economic answer, which entirely misses the point. The restaurants we love, we love for the entire experience, and price is part of that experience. Even for people who can happily afford the higher price, it still results in a different experience. The people around you in the restaurant will be different. Your perception of the value o…

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.

What if you don't want the new customers, you want the original ones

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

#238

Post by Alex3917 »

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…

> I'm sure people in NY and LA do as well

In NYC we see this for pizza and ramen and maybe dim sum, but not burgers for whatever reason. If you look at the top 10 burger places in NYC, some are ridiculously crowded and some aren't, but the ones that are crowded (e.g. The NoMad bar) aren't crowded because of the burgers. They're probably at capacity during peak hours at night, but you don't see hour long lines at 10am on a weekday like you do with some other food types.

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

yesenadam wrote: post #225
skrebbel wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuance on HN?! Where else‽

OMG an interrobang, my eyes can hardly believe it. Haha. I love the idea (I constantly use '?!' in online chat) but they don't look so great. Also, in chess, !? and ?! have different meanings..

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Spoiler: he didn't actually kill the restaurant. He made it really popular, and it shut down for unrelated reasons.

Unless they're already too busy, 99% of small business owners would love to have this "problem" of huge lines out their door.

This reads as yet manifestation of the idea that because I'm in a place or I found something or I live somewhere, all the people who came after me are undeserving filth who are going to "ruin it". Same idea as anti-transplant, anti-foreigner, anti-gentrification, anti-tourist, anti-development, etc. I got here on this date, so that's a reasonable cut off for who "deserves" to be here.

As someone else in this thread put it: you're not in the traffic jam, you are the traffic jam.

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