βurgerβusiness

Rare Bar & Grill is serving up a bit of history to honor National Hamburger Day. Today, customers at its new location in New York City’s Fashion 26 Wyndham hotel on West 26th Street can get the famous “Louis Lunch” burger or Rare’s signature cheeseburger with fries and a beer for $20.10. After that, Rare [...]

Can we all agree that there are three core components to a burger? The meat’s one; toppings are the second. And the third? The bun! Burgers’ skyrocketing popularity has brought us limitless variations on core components #1 and #2, but buns remain the poor relations of the burger family. Marginalized, ignored or scorned. R.F. O’Sullivan [...]

The Checkers/Rally’s system includes 820 drive-in restaurants in the U.S., but just 18 of those units are getting an ambitious new array of burgers. The Flavor Built Burgers menu encompasses six different sandwiches, each of which can be ordered as a single-, double- or triple-patty build. Whether its kitchen operations can handle the arrival of essentially [...]

Competing with the big burger chains “can be like battling the Mafia,” says Spike Mendelsohn, chef-owner of Washington. D.C.’s Good Stuff Eatery, which is itself about to become a chain. Spike isn’t suggesting McDonald’s or Burger King want him to sleep with the fishes, “it’s just that they’re so powerful and they’ve given burgers a [...]

Ξ I’m not sure when McDonald’s plans to use a 92-second McCafé  TV commercial other than at its shareholder meeting (as it did last week), but “Joe and Frank” from DDB is a charmer. And those who, like Joe and Frank, are of a certain age may recognize Blythe Danner, actress and mother of Gwyneth Paltrow, Channing [...]

[May 20 Update: As expected, Red Robin announced the new menu, in stores by 5/24. Announced two $6.99 LTOs—Big Melt Bacon Burger and Honey Mustard Chicken sandwich—coming June 14. Comp sales for Q1 were a respectable -2.3%, compared with -10.5% and -14.9% the previous two quarters.] Red Robin Gourmet Burgers will announce a new menu this [...]

[Watch the BK ribs commercial here.] Burger King began its roll out of its new Fire-Grilled Ribs today. The limited-time promotion, expected to last through July 4, puts the chain’s new batch broilers to work and adds a super-premium-price product to the chain’s “barbell” pricing strategy, which seeks to balance budget-price and higher-ticket “indulgent” items [...]

Ξ What to watch for this week: Today: Sonic accelerates its product-quality-improvement plan with the introduction of Real Ice Cream and a milkshake promotion to back it. Tomorrow: Casual-dining chain O’Charley’s adds a new tiered value menu with 12 entreés  priced between $7.99 and $9.99. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Q0U6Nsr2oΞ “I eat what tastes good, I’m a Yummivore. I [...]

Having eked out a 0.8% gain in same-store sales for Wendy’s during the quarter ended April 4 (during which it brought out the Bacon & Blue burger), Wendy’s/Arby’s Group President/CEO Roland Smith today outlined future plans for the brand that rely heavily on the proven appeal of bacon and cost-friendly chicken. The chain will add two [...]

That Burger King’s $1  ¼-lb. Double Cheeseburger promotion sold a lot of burgers is both the good and the bad news, executives for Syracuse, N.Y.-based Carrols Restaurant Group, operator of 311 Burger Kings, told analysts this week. They explained why the promotion became a profit-margin meltdown. For the first fiscal quarter, ended April 4, same-store [...]

[NOTE:  This is the 2010 promotion. To see the 2012 "Great Tastes of America" commercial, click here.] General Motors famously summarized American culture as “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.” In England, McDonald’s now is evoking the American personality with images of football, “Baywatch”-style lifeguards, monster trucks and Mardi Gras paraders. These icons are presented [...]

A year ago, Burger King caused a stir in the United States by offering a $3.69 Angry Whopper to those who agreed to “unfriend” 10 people on Facebook. The social-media network didn’t like the idea of pulling the plug on its users and the “Whopper Sacrifice” promotion—created by agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky—was terminated. Now, [...]

[May 11: More fowl play as Whataburger adds Honey BBQ Chicken Strip Sandwich.] It’s National Burger Month but high beef prices threaten to ruin the party. Already this week, three burger-menu chains have added non-beef sandwiches. One is Carl’s Jr. , which introduced the Teriyaki Chicken Sandwich today. A variation of a teriyaki-style burger it [...]

No longer just a regional chain with retro carhops, Sonic Drive-In establishes itself as an innovative, national QSR power with a new game plan outlined to Wall Street this week at “Analysts Day” meetings at its Oklahoma City headquarters. That strategic plan includes the menu introductions this year of a line of Loaded Burgers, a [...]

In Switzerland and Austria, where it is greatly outnumbered by rival McDonald’s, Burger King has called on a celebrity/fashion photographer to give its brand and its burgers some eye-catching style. Austrian Manfred Baumann is the photographer for Burger King’s “eMOTIVe” print campaign, and the portfolio on his site showcases his photos of such stars as [...]