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It has been more than 40 years since Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins had their perfect season and Super Bowl victory, which means many of the young adults drawn to Shula Burger restaurants have little connection with the Shula name. Now, as the chain prepares for the opening of its first franchised location next month in [...]

The Counter’s Founder Jeff Weinstein says the company’s new fast-casual prototype has the potential to take the brand where it could not otherwise have gone while also freeing the original concept to evolve. The first location for Built Custom Burgers (a play on The Counter’s “Custom Built Burgers” sub-theme) opened last week by the University [...]

Fast-casual burger chain Meatheads celebrates its fifth anniversary today (1/28), which means it is young enough to remain true to the quality commitment on which it was founded but mature enough to concede that a few tweaks could be made to the concept. One departure from custom is the decision to offer a special birthday [...]

Smashburger disproved the notion that a brand couldn’t be both local and national when it created special burgers for each of the markets or regions in which it operates. For example, in Costa Rica, where its first store opened on Dec. 1, Smashburger devised a burger topped with local favorites chorizo, grilled Turrialba cheese, refried [...]

A consultant likely would have told Rivers Corbett and Ray Henry in 2010 that the fast-casual burger segment was already overloaded and they should look elsewhere. Opening a burger restaurant in January in Fredericton, New Brunswick, probably weren’t optimal choices on paper either. But Henry and Corbett believed in their concept, Relish Gourmet Burgers, bucked [...]

One of the oldest American family/burger restaurant brands embraces the new fast-casual philosophy tomorrow when Shoney’s opens its limited-service prototype, Shoney’s On the Go, in Houston. Beginning as Alex “Shoney” Schoenbaum’s Parkette Drive-In in Charleston, W.Va., in 1947, the name became Shoney’s and the restaurant became a Big Boy franchisee in 1951. The Big Boy [...]

Quarterly earnings conference calls by Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, The Wendy’s Company and Jack in the Box provided interesting snapshots of where the burger-restaurant business stood through the first half of 2012. Same-store sales reports were positive if not stellar. Red Robin’s comp sales for it Q2 ended July 8 were up 0.8% thanks to [...]

Adopting a marketing presence to match its national brand stature, Smashburger this month has launched a broadcast/digital ad campaign along with its new logo and tagline that all focus on its “smashing” identity. “Smashed fresh. Served delicious” is the tagline used with the logo and in a series of 60-second radio spots. The spots introduce [...]

Fast-casual continues to be the engine driving overall restaurant growth, and Five Guys Burgers and Fries remains the leader among fast-casual burger-menu restaurants, according to new data from Chicago-based Technomic. Technomic has increased to 150 from 100 the number of top fast-casual chain brands covered in its annual report, in itself an indication of the [...]

The menu differentiation between Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and its fast-casual spin off Red Robin’s Burger Works continues to blur. Added today as the latest item for Red Robin’s menu is a Red’s Tavern Double burger with two beef patties topped with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and “Red’s Secret Tavern Sauce” on a toasted sesame [...]

Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard isn’t one of the big boys, but neither is it a corner burger joint. Publicly traded and based in Golden, Colo., the “better burger” chain has 43 locations, most of them in Colorado. This week Good Times President-CEO Boyd Hoback, with the chain since 1992, announced a “financial advisory [...]

Zach Conine doesn’t. And he’s cool with charging $5 for fries, too. The VP-development for LEV Restaurant Group says the menu for its i♥burgers restaurant that it opened in December 2010 in the ultra toney The Shoppes at The Palazzo hotel/casino is not just fairly priced, it’s the least-expensive dining option in the  complex. LEV [...]

A day after Wendy’s said it needs to rebalance its menu by adding more premium-price items, Burger King showed how it’s done. The chain extended its top-of-the-line Chef’s Choice brand introduced just a few months ago with two new burgers. The 5.5-oz.-patty Chef’s Choice burgers are priced at $4.99 as chains continue the previously forecast [...]

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers plans to open four more locations for its Red Robin’s Burger Works fast-casual concept this year, the company announced today. These will include a location on the Ohio State University campus while others will be in the Denver area, where the first Burger Works opened last year. Burger Works has more-limited [...]

What happens when you follow conventional wisdom but your customers don’t? When Everest Burger opened a year ago in Glencoe, Ill., an affluent northern Chicago suburb, it had all the 21st-century burger-restaurant earmarks: upscale grass-fed-beef specialty burgers and a fast-casual service model. Owners Mark and Margarita Challenger weren’t novices: They own the successful Guanajuato Mexican [...]