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

• jonplackett 8y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17378673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17378673 Too much success too quick is always bad I guess.
• Sam_Harris 8y ago
  Two pop-ups, constantly jumping text, auto play video.
• goshx 8y ago
  This reminds me of Anthony Bourdain's visit to Venice and a local restaurant that only accepted being filmed if he didn't tell anyone the name or location of the place. It can definitely kill the business. Off-topic question: how does a submission gets front page with just 3 points?
  • _jn 8y ago
    That can happen when the votes all occur in short succession.
    • dmix 8y ago
      And it won't last very long at all unless someone else boosts it.
    • amoorthy 8y ago
      Fascinating. Are you certain of this or is this conjecture? Feels like this could be exploited if true. Maybe it's more sophisticated like votes must be from people with high karma points?
      • Fuzzwah 8y ago
        It can definitely be gamed. I always used to notice links to the nautilus science site would instantly get 6 or so upvotes. While pondering this was when I realised they were YC backed, and stopped wondering if they'd get called out on it....
  • gkoberger 8y ago
    He did this quite often! "But on the other hand, that's kind of a destructive process because if I name the place - and I don't always when it's a place like that - I've changed it. The next time I go back, there's tourists. There's people who've seen it on the show. And then I might hear from the same person from that neighborhood say, you ruined my favorite bar, (laughter) you know? All the regular customers have run away and it's filled with, you know, tourists in ugly T-shirts and flip-flops. There are times that I have looked at the camera and said, look, I'm just not going to tell you where this place is. I don't want to change it. It should stay like this forever. I do do that now and again." https://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/558792269/anthony-bourdain-on-appetites-washing-dishes-and-the-food-he-still-wont-eat https://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/558792269/anthony-bourdain-on...
• GNOMES 8y ago
  Wow, I planned on only skimming the article because I figured it was clickbait... Loved every minute of this piece.
  • garysahota93 8y ago
    Same! I read the whole thing and I was genuinely sad by the end of it. Was not what I expected for a friday, but dam. It was a really good read!
• olalonde 8y ago
  I wonder if raising prices quite a bit would have helped.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    Not for the locals.
  • brewdad 8y ago
    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 local customers once you have successfully chased the hordes away?
    • deckar01 8y ago
      There is a fancy burger place near me that only serves a fixed number of customers per day. It is famous for the chef kicking people out for bringing children, dressing disrespectfully, and being offended for other random reasons. They gave out a membership card that allowed regulars to be seated immediately and avoid the daily limit.
      • mikepurvis 8y ago
        That seems like a really smart way of handling it. There are a bunch of restaurant types which just aren't that elastic to changing demand; basically anything which has a longer preparation time and is expensive enough that you can't afford to just massively overprovision. Thinking like slow-roasted meats, most soups/chilis, or fancy pastries like croissants, yeast-raised donuts, etc. Basically any place that's serving that stuff (and legitimately making it in-house vs warming it up from frozen like a chain) is going to be done when they run out for the day. So handing out cards to locals to skip the line would be a great way of not alienating your loyal customer base.
      • deleted 8y ago
• admn2 8y ago
  Enjoyed the article. This reminds me a lot of what Groupon used to do to restaurants in the early days. They would just get slammed by hundreds of crabby people looking to one and done them for a half priced meal. Obviously as Groupon became more ubiquitous this lessened, but I do vividly remember going to a hot dog and burger place and finding the two owner-operators absolutely miserable as a line of 20 people formed out their door. Back to the article: seems this is why Shake Shack succeeded and prospered with one store being inundated by customers. I'm sure this place has a lot of smart money wanting to use their name and recipe. Maybe not such a bad outcome?
  • peterwwillis 8y ago
    Shake Shack began as a hot dog stand, but a hot dog stand created for a park being developed by a successful NYC restaurateur who owned a hospitality management company. If you're the sole developer of a new downtown park, and you own the only hotdog stand in that park, and you have lots of resources, it's going to be a success. When later there's the opportunity to develop the park further, you may pony up the cash to build a building to sell even more food. And later, when you see how successful it is, and you see the opportunity to branch out, you can do that, too. Some restaurants become popular because people with money are in the right place at the right time, and not because it was an old-school authentic eatery discovered by a food writer and put on a top-foods-list.
    • hedvig 8y ago
      Supply side economics dominates. There is no such thing as authentic demand.
      • afterburner 8y ago
        Isn't the lesson here rather that monopolies, good management, and quality products are good for business?
        • kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
• lanius 8y ago
  Are there similar stories of promising tech companies that achieved overnight fame but couldn't handle it and shut down?
• ddingus 8y ago
  :D I would visit this place a couple times per year. It was a place you took someone to for a special time. And when done that way, as it was done for me (Thanks Joe P), the need to respect that seems obvious, built right in. With life being how it is sometimes, it has been a while. Damn. This story makes me sad.
  • ddingus 8y ago
    What's the deal? Don't you guys have little secrets around town that you kind of want to respect, have a little bit of culture around?
• cronix 8y ago
  What a great, thoughtful, introspective piece. How rare. I do miss Stanich's and was actually unaware of what happened. Great place - I hope he can work it out.
• cf498 8y ago
  It makes a great point about mass tourism in general and what it does to the local population.
• bearcobra 8y ago
  The question of how businesses should treat long term customers is something I think about a lot. When I worked in a cable company call center I used to hear people complain about rate increases being unfair because they had been customers for such a long time. Which doesn't really matter in a duopoly. Compare that to a restaurants where there's so much competition that efforts to maintain loyalty seem almost futile.
• cpeterso 8y ago
  Vox Media just published a video about the negative impact of Instagram and photo geo-tagging on nature sightseeing. The "Leave No Trace" organization now recommends that people not geo-tag their nature photos so as to limit the number of visitors to remote or sensitive nature areas. "What happens when nature goes viral?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itjc14Fm-gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itjc14Fm-gs
• JPKab 8y ago
  People are lemmings. Franklin's BBQ in Austin has hours long lines. It's very good brisket. The hill country of Texas is FILLED with equally good brisket joints that don't have lines. People who wait in line for 4 hours won't admit this. Cognitive dissonance kicks in, and Franklin's is unique and better than everyone else in their minds. Try telling a person that their Bose headphones are overpriced and overrated, and you will see this in action. Lists are indeed stupid, but only because people aren't rational decision makers.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    That's because we are not satisfied unless we feel we have the best. Second best just doesn't cut it, and making it measurable is a great way to focus all the attention on the #1 spot. Same with music rankings, movies, books and so on. It's what powers best sellers: best sellers will sell more because they are best sellers!
  • et-al 8y ago
    Agreed. For me, most restaurants fall into good/so-so/not good buckets, so I dislike ranking them and selecting a best, however folks love top 10 lists.
  • siphor 8y ago
    do you know of a pair of better/cheaper over the ear noise cancelling headphones?
    • l0b0 8y ago
      Came to say the same thing. I'm not exactly an audiophile, but being able to listen to an audio book at less than 110% volume while walking next to a busy road is fantastic.
      • Filligree 8y ago
        They're not exactly cheap, but the Bose QC headphones are superb.
    • 8y ago
• narrator 8y ago
  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 just to make a reservation! That these burger joint owners shut down instead of raising prices seems like a huge business mistake. They could have put 50% off coupons in the local newspaper or something if they wanted to make the place available to locals at reasonable prices. [1] https://a16z.com/2016/08/13/pricing/ https://a16z.com/2016/08/13/pricing/
  • mujoco 8y ago
    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.
    • craftyguy 8y ago
      Others in this thread have suggested that the restaurant give locals a 'locals card', which would allow them to purchase food at a more reasonable price.
      • willyt 8y ago
        Burger pass. $30 for a burger pass. Gets you burgers for $4 for the rest of the year. or pay $20 for a burger now. You can secretly give out burger passes to locals when the tourists aren't looking.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
        • jcater 8y ago
• jacquesm 8y ago
  "Too much love will kill you, just as sure as none." It's an interesting reflection on the effect of the internet hordes that can be called up by a careless article or tweet. A similar thing happens to restaurants that receive the Michelin stars and to single individuals that end up being in more popular demand than can be sustained (this happens to some consultants). Not all of the typical defenses are available all the time, such as raising your prices or other ways of limiting the influx. Besides that not being fair to your original customers. Hard problem, the internet mob is like a bunch of locusts, they devour that which they visit and leave it devastated.
  • andybak 8y ago
    > they devour that which they visit and leave it devastated. Not disagreeing but the "they" is "us". You're not in a traffic jam, you are the traffic jam.
    • ip26 8y ago
      Yes & no; some of us are rubberneckers, some of us are not.
      • bartread 8y ago
        I think everyone is to some extent, but you can choose whether or not to recognise that there are consequences and learn to moderate your behaviour accordingly. Or not.
    • bartread 8y ago
      Agree. Whilst I think that people, or rather popularity, ruins everything, and whilst I'm frustrated that rather explore and discover things for themselves people would rather be told what's good and descend in a mob, I have to admit that I'm part of the problem: sometimes it's just easier.
      • karmelapple 8y ago
        You don’t truly mean popularity literally ruins everything, correct? There are all kinds of things that are better because they’re popular, or at least could not have been as great without their popularity. Smart phones, for instance: if they didn’t get really popular, and there was not as much competition in the hardware and app space, the apps and hardware would not have gotten so much better so quickly. Other ones off the top of my head: air travel (popularity has led to fairly low prices, even if the experience has suffered for those looking for bargain basement prices), computers, coffee, beer.
• Altaer 8y ago
  There is a local barbershop I have been going to for the past 4 years or so. Recently, they wanted to increase some business, so they were asking customers to leave a review. Loving the place and wanting to give back, I left a good review on Google. Fast forward a few weeks, and received emails from google saying my review has been viewed 100s of times. I used to be able to call and get an appointment the same day, or same afternoon even, but now it's difficult to be seen the same day. It's a bit of a bummer, and I'm not really sure how to solve it. It hurt me as a long time customer, but the shop is doing a ton more business now. Now I'm hesitant to do this for any other business I enjoy, even knowing this is a selfish feeling.
  • jacobsenscott 8y ago
    That happened to me. Now I just scheduled my next appointment when I finish the current appointment. Every 5 weeks. And you get the same barber every time which is nice - you don't need to tell them what cut you want every single time. And it is good for the business because the have a somewhat predictable revenue source.
  • antisthenes 8y ago
    Ask to be put ahead of line for writing the review? I'd have no shame about asking for some free haircuts as well. Your review is probably responsible for increasing their business 1.3-1.5x
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
      Yep exactly or "this" as they say. The Market doesn't have to respond so slowly that prices stay the same even though demand went up. It doesn't have to charge a faithful customer more than an unfaithful one either. It would be funny, although not culturally normal, to see companies start to review customers.
  • francisofascii 8y ago
    This problem exists with vacation rentals. Leaving a great review leads its to being fully booked next year, especially for a seasonal rental.
• pj_mukh 8y ago
  Sorry, my engineering my mind craves a solution. Wouldn't forcing people into an asynchronous online/mobile queue be the best solution? You can favour verified locals if you want there, control exactly how many orders you take in, and nip any potential disappointments (leading to bad Yelp reviews) right in the bud. I've trekked to enough "Best <X> in <Y>" places and been the "outsider" grumbling waiting outside in a giant lineup (or being at the front of the line at 9am), to know that it is a cherished experience while travelling, giving you a piece of local flare, and like many problems a focussed effort could help it scale properly.
  • moate 8y ago
    You're trying to engineer a solution to the problem of "how do you make everyone happy" (albeit in a specific scenario). If you change things, someone will be upset by this. At best you can hope to optimize this to make the MOST people happy and the LEAST people unhappy, but you can't get a perfect score here.
  • foobarchu 8y ago
    I feel like the problem there is that it would require expending a lot of effort to solve what will probably be a temporary problem. That kind of system isn't going to be cheap, and the high traffic will only last as long as the list in question is popular. As soon as another 'best burger place' comes along, all that traffic is probably going to die down, and now you're a small diner left with this complex expensive system. It reminds me a lot of the dilemma facing graphics card makers recently, wherein the cards keep getting bought up by cryptocurrency miners. If they raise prices, they're pricing out of the regular customers who will stick around after the cryptocurrency mining dies down, and if they raise their production capacity too much then they will be left with massive overcapacity with things die down.
    • pj_mukh 8y ago
      I'm thinking this could be a solution that various businesses could adopt temporarily. And not a turnkey solution for each business. These stories also keep coming out of various businesses in Europe with the influx of Chinese and Indian tourists, eager to pay them but the businesses have no infrastructure to "shape" the inflow of customers. If this is indeed a big problem, this is also a big opportunity.
• harbie 8y ago
  Reminds me of a Nathan For You episode that lampoons the idea of ranking something as subjective as a burger. Nathan convinces the owner of a burger joint in LA to go on a popular local radio station and promise that he has the best burger in LA, and offer $100 to anyone who eats there and disagrees. The comedy in this is apparent to pretty much anyone, but people will still refer to different restaurants as 'the best'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-wUs-fofs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-wUs-fofs
  • andybak 8y ago
    My mood has more effect on the pleasure I get from many things than their intrinsic nature. The first beer on holiday in a new country is the best beer you've ever tasted. A meal eaten in silence when you've been looking forward to it tastes divine. Hell - my own narcissism even overrides most things. My own cooking is often my favourite thing in the world. And on the other side of things - high expectations or rote habit often kill pleasures for me. If I try too hard to enjoy something it blows away like dust.
    • mindcrime 8y ago
      Context is king. Back when I was a consultant and flew all over the place a lot, there were more than a few times I landed at O'Hare sometime after midnight, got off the plane starving, and immediately beat it to the "open 24 hours" McDonalds in the food court and had a box of Chicken McNuggets that were, at that moment, the best meal I could dream of. I mean, who knew that damn mcnuggets could be absolutely heavenly under the right circumstances...
    • InitialLastName 8y ago
      > The first beer on holiday in a new country is the best beer you've ever tasted. I walked 7 miles home from work through 6 inches of slush last night. Right after that came the best beer I've ever tasted.
• stagger87 8y ago
  I eat at a few other particularly popular Portland restaurants where they don't take reservations and the wait can be several hours. Fortunately they will put your name on a list so you can go do something else in the meantime. It's easy to say this sitting behind my computer, but I think the only thing I would change if I were in the owners shoes, is to handle the crowds at the door better. Just because you have a long line doesn't mean you have to change anything about your business, go faster, be more stressed, etc. You would have to convey that to your employees as well.
  • hnuser355 8y ago
    When I visited Portland me and a friend tried to go to that ice cream spot everyone loves. Way too long so we went to the book store instead
    • crooked-v 8y ago
      I suppose it says something about the city that I'm pretty sure "that ice cream spot everyone loves" is Salt & Straw on NW 23rd. The line there is always ridiculous and there's other great local ice cream places within a 10-minute walk throughout downtown.
    • wallflower 8y ago
      I went to that donut place that is a brand in itself. Kind of over hyped. Wish I spent the hour plus waiting in line at the technical branch of that Valhalla of book stores.
      • stagger87 8y ago
        In case anyone tries to look this up, the standalone Powell's technical book store is now closed and has been merged into the main store on Burnside (mostly located on the top floor).
        • wallflower 8y ago
          Thank you for letting us know.
• gerbilly 8y ago
  This reminds me of the first thing everyone asks when you tell them you just got back from Maui: "Did you go see the sunrise on Haleakalā?" And, no I have not, because I don't want to wake up at 5:00am while on vacation and drive to a crowded parking lot to watch the sunrise in the cold with 80-100 strangers. Why is it that we all have to have the same experiences?
  • joshstrange 8y ago
    This coupled with the articles I've seen on people on vacation all hoarding together to get the perfect picture of $insertMonumentOrSkylineHere. I remember one in particular that showed this gorgeous picture then showed what was behind the photographer and it was mob of people all taking the same picture. It honestly makes me sick. Those are the people that do thing to say they did them rather than for the experience IMHO. If your life looks perfect on FB/Insta/Snap I just assume you are empty inside. Well "produce" our lives a little but some people go so far out of their way I just don't understand how people can follow that shit and not see how vapid/fake/BS it all is. Like serious this [0] fuck right off. I in no way endorse or support the backlash she got but it just all seems so stupid and wasteful to me. [0] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/blogger-bombarded-with-abuse-over-fake-pancakes-snap/news-story/3e3685be13cefbeeee33787bbb99d24c https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/blogge...
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • jkestner 8y ago
      Yes. Similar to my child, who's interested in the process of the "art" she's scribbling rather than the result, and forgets about it soon after. But more self-conscious, as the process of taking common photos is a social act. What if the mechanics of camera/social photo apps rewarded people for taking original photos? https://www.wired.com/2015/09/camera-wont-let-take-photo-everyone-else/ https://www.wired.com/2015/09/camera-wont-let-take-photo-eve...
  • peterwwillis 8y ago
• IncRnd 8y ago
  >> Apparently, after my story came out, crowds of people started coming in the restaurant, people in from out of town, or from the suburbs, basically just non-regulars. And as the lines started to build up, his employees -- who were mainly family members -- got stressed out, and the stress would cause them to not be as friendly as they should be, or to shout out crazy long wait times for burgers in an attempt to maybe convince people to leave, and as this started happening, things fell by the wayside. Dishes weren’t cleared quickly, and these new people weren’t having the proper Stanich’s experience, and Steve would spend his entire day going around apologizing and trying to fix things. They might pay him lip service to his face, but they were never coming back so they had no problem going on Yelp or Facebook and denouncing the restaurant and saying that the burgers were bad. Poor management is what caused the shutdown. Stanich knew about the problems and didn't fix them. Instead he went around apologizing about the problems that he shoulds have fixed in the first place.
• LargeWu 8y ago
  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 only reason anybody cares about that reviewer's opinions are because he has a platform and people are desperate to belong to something, anything.
  • joe_the_user 8y ago
    His opinion about what's best probably could be argued with. However, there are lots of definitely mediocre restaurants out there that would not make it to anyone's top ten list. So I'd have every reason to visit a restaurant on this sort of list as opposed to visiting a restaurant at random. Personally, I'm OK with either grilled or raw onions (though I prefer raw). But there are lots of characteristics with few if any fans - soggy, overdone, cooked lettuce, etc. The big thing is most restaurants don't have any reason to work at being good not to mention great. Most restaurants just soak up whoever happens to be in the area and has a preference for their type of food and so mediocrity not pretending to be anything else rules. Good-enough food at a good-enough price to make the owner a good-enough profit is it.
  • koolba 8y ago
    > 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. Blasphemy! The one true greatest burger has both kinds. Also, the grilled onions are between the meat and cheese so that the latter holds them in place.
  • chaostheory 8y ago
    > The only reason anybody cares about that reviewer's opinions are because he has a platform and people are desperate to belong to something, anything. I disagree. It's not about "belonging to something". I agree with what the author wrote in the article. The problem is with the paradox of choice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice). Decisions are paralyzing when people are faced with a myriad of choices. "Best of lists" fix this problem for many people, which is why they are so universally popular across industries. Now instead of picking from a 1000 choices, you have 10.
• soneca 8y ago
  Great article. A paragraph with the gist of what I enjoyed in it: "Or is this just what we are now -- a horde with a checklist and a camera phone, intent on self-producing the destruction of anything left that feels real, one Instagram story at a time?"
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• blairanderson 8y ago
  The saddest thing about this link is a huge fucking spammy email popup. Would downvote if I could.
  • magic_beans 8y ago
    That's absolutely not the journalist's fault.
• sandov 8y ago
  Unclosable popup.
  • arprocter 8y ago
    Toggling Firefox reader view on and off worked for me
  • JimiofEden 8y ago
    https://i.imgur.com/Fz8RwgQ.png https://i.imgur.com/Fz8RwgQ.png Or you could just click the x
    • sandov 8y ago
      I didn't see it, but you got to admit that they purposefully made it hard to find by putting it there, in that color considering the background. Even though I found the X now, I won't read the article, just on principle.
• evo_9 8y ago
  They need to introduce a 'Local VIP' card. Basically if you are regular you get a card; if you aren't a regular they recognized and you are a semi-regular local, you show your drivers license and they can decide if you warrant a local VIP card. If this doesn't solve it, then raise the price. Still too many people, and long waits - what a great problem - get a loan and open a second location or expand the first.
  • king_panic 8y ago
    ^ THIS
• king_panic 8y ago
  Unpopular opinion: Good at cooking, bad at business.
• huangc10 8y ago
  Really interesting article. This is the link to the yelp review: https://www.yelp.com/biz/stanichs-portland-5?osq=stanich https://www.yelp.com/biz/stanichs-portland-5?osq=stanich IMO, it's unfair to blame it on the guy who recommended the restaurant. There are thousands of restaurants that dream to have it happen. Think of it like this, I write an app and Mark Z shares it on his twitter. Sure, the traffic can kill the app, but I have to find a way to maintain it and do my due diligence to make sure the site will run smoothly when the user base increases. It's too bad what happened. It does appear the real problem was family issues and not having great business practice. NOT the author/article. I want to include the fact that burgers are probably my second favorite food after a Nigiri set.
• baby 8y ago
  The title is too clickbaity for me to read it. Tl;dr?
  • Domenic_S 8y ago
    The article is worth your time.
• techsin101 8y ago
  Uh temporary surge pricing??, anyone !?
• tptacek 8y ago
  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 Chicago regularly, as I'm sure people in NY and LA do as well; there's a biennial ritual of naming the new "best burger" in the city (it's Kuma's! no, now it's Au Cheval! no, Au Cheval is franchising, time for something fancier --- Mott Street! no wait, the Loyalist†). It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore. But it's hard to fault the businesses for going along! They're there to make a living for themselves. 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; it's a standard burger shop burger executed well. It seems like the only real scaling option Steve Stanich has, if he's not willing to piss off part of his clientele (a reasonable option!) is to partner and franchise. † I'm particularly irritated about Loyalist because their bar has one of the best amaro collections in Chicago
  • paulie_a 8y ago
    It's umami. Au cheval is overrated with the pretentious staff.
    • monksy 8y ago
      I'm not a fan of Small Chauval (too expensive for what you get), and I'm not going to wait 2-3hrs for a burger.
      • tptacek 8y ago
        Honestly I'm not sure I'm sold on any destination burger. Google Kenji Alt's ultra-smash burger, and just make them at home. I'm unhappy about Au Cheval because the rest of the menu is relevant to my interests, but I can't eat there because it's a destination burger restaurant now. But, back to the point of this article: my problems != Hogsalt Restaurants problems!
• JimA 8y ago
  Seems like an easy fix is to only sell prepaid burger cards. Set some number - 10x, 20x, etc. the cost of a burger. Keeps the locals able to frequent regularly and highly discourages anyone coming just to cross it off a list.
• scythe 8y ago
  Everyone here is suggesting the "correct" business-y solutions, like "raise prices", "offer membership", etc -- but sometimes, you don't need sound economic theory, you just need a dirty hack that kind of works. Change the name and move a block over. Boom. Tourists gone. (You should be able, in this situation, to convince a lender that you can build a successful business, if liquidity is an issue.)
• bookofjoe 8y ago
  "The Tragedy of the Commons":https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...
• code_duck 8y ago
  I found the best extended stay in Denver and I’ve been avoiding reviewing it. The last thing I’d want to do is bring it to the attention of the people who ruin the other motels of that variety in the area.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• arprocter 8y ago
  Folks probably just scroll to '#1 the country' and decide to go I wonder if this outcome could have been avoided if the list wasn't numbered, or was categorized in some other way - would an 'x best burgers' without a ranking prevent one place getting mobbed?
• stevew20 8y ago
  Hell of an article.
• sizzzzlerz 8y ago
  Who waits for 5 hours to get a hamburger? That's just silly. Either limit the hours in which burgers are served or hand out tickets allowing the holder to buy up to, say 4, burgers. The total amount served would be based on what the staff can reasonably prepare over a certain amount of time without going crazy. If you don't get a ticket, sorry, come back tomorrow. If you don't want burgers, you get to skip the burger line for a seat at the table where you may order anything else off the menu, just no burgers. After awhile, the hassle will cause people to stop trying and the crowds would be reduced to a sane number.
  • phlakaton 8y ago
    Same people who wait all night for a product launch. Or all day to get into a convention panel. Or all afternoon to get into a concert. People get unreasonably obsessive about the things they love. It is known.
    • drdeadringer 8y ago
      At the Comic Con in San Jose earlier this year, the lines for Stan Lee's autograph were insane. Hours backed up at the dedicated empty table starting at 9am 'cause he'll be there at 2pm [or whatever].
  • megablast 8y ago
    I mean, if you are there with friends, you grab a beer, sit around and talk. Or as the article says, someone yelled out a silly time to make people go away.
• andrewljohnson 8y ago
  I'd establish two lines at my newly famous hamburger place. The express line would be paying $50/burger. The normal line would be paying the regular price. I'd have signage saying why this was the case, telling people I thought the traffic was crazy but what are you gonna do, and inviting people to come back some other time once the hubbub died down.
• libraryatnight 8y ago
  This is similar to why I hate when TV shows feature my favorite local restaurants. They either create so much traffic the quality of the food takes a dip, or they get so busy it's just obscene and the only people who go there are tourists checking off some Guy Fieri bucket list. I'm sure some owners don't mind so long as money keeps coming in, but boy does it suck for the community who basically lose a quality eatery to novelty.
• sureaboutthis 8y ago
  When I went for training at Qantel Computers in Hayward California long ago for a few weeks, we desperately searched for decent food in the area and even bought a hot plate to make our own food in our hotel room (which we later were told to remove cause that wasn't legal at the time). On our very last night, our handlers told us about a family owned Mexican restaurant down the street. We ate there that night and it was the best Mexican food I have ever had. "Why didn't you tell us about that place weeks ago!", we cried. "Cause every time we do, when we go there to eat, we have to stand in line behind guys like you and can't get in", they said.
• deleted 8y ago
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• phlakaton 8y ago
  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. ;-)
• tracker1 8y ago
  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.
• joezydeco 8y ago
  Let's hear from a local about what really happened to Stanich's: https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-not-to-be-the-best#7564793 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 ketchup bottles indicating it had been at least a week since anyone bothered wiping them. We watched our food sit at the pass for five minutes before a waitress could be bothered to serve us. The place had all of the hallmark signs of a restaurant going under." "Did Kevin Alexander hurt Stanich's business by giving them the press? Maybe. But Kevin Alexander isn't responsible for running the restaurant. It isn't Kevin Alexander's job to clean the tables or the floor or the dishes or the ketchup bottles. Stanich killed Stanich's."
  • gkoberger 8y ago
    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.
    • andy_ppp 8y ago
      Oh man, the renovations I’m making without having any customers are damn awesome...
      • Shorn 8y ago
        Ouch.
  • deleted 8y ago
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• ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  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.
• sergiotapia 8y ago
  >“It was always delicious, but never really crowded,” he said. “But then it started appearing on all these national lists, and now, no matter the day, you’ve got to get there before 11am if you don’t want to wait two hours.” Like Knaus Berry Farm here in Miami, which opens only for the season. They sell these cinammon rolls which I shit you not people line up for since 4am to get them. I went one day at 10am thinking everybody is at work; nope - still full with a line curving out in the sunny sidewalk. Their food is good but not "wait in the hot Miami sun for four hours" good.
• kyledrake 8y ago
  I'm a local. I've eaten a burger at Stanich's, way before any of this happened (apparently? I'm just now learning about it). It was fine, but calling it the best burger in America is extremely overselling it. Oregon has a law that you need to serve some kind of food if you sell hard liquor, and that's pretty much what their burgers felt like, an afterthought to fill OLCC regulations. It was a place for old dudes to get a Budweiser and watch the basketball game, which perhaps made it one of the more authentic places in town (if that's all it takes, I know dozens of places in Minnesota you'll love), but definitely not the best place to get a burger. If you want a much, much better burger in Portland, go to the Super Deluxe, or go to Yakuza and order theirs, or even Killer Burger, or really just about any other place. Portland is an extremely competitive food town that regularly has burger competitions (http://www.portlandburgerweek.com/ http://www.portlandburgerweek.com/), and there are dozens if not hundreds of places where you can get a burger that will be better. I understand that the article isn't necessarily about this, but I'm having trouble walking away from what I know from direct experience is a ridiculous decision. To give a perspective on how ridiculous this is to me, if I was asked to name just Portland's 50 best burger places, I'm not sure Stanich's would be on it. It's not negligent because he unleashed the internet hordes on this place, it's negligent because the burgers there just weren't very good.
• Applejinx 8y ago
  This is another aspect of frictionless criticism. Being able to tell the whole wide world 'this is the one bestest burger in America', EVEN IF IT'S TRUE, is greatly different from just knowing it for yourself. Things don't scale the way internet attention can scale. And nothing a 'market' or price-juggling can do, will change that. If you simply jack the price until it's so high that the sales unit volume is the same as it should be, you've completely changed everything in the dynamics of the business and its relationship to its context. You can't CURE this with markets.
• Markoff 8y ago
  easy solution - serve only reservations and limit amount of reservations this is doable without raising prices and hey you can have even quota of reservations for regulars
• aeriklawson 8y ago
  In my experience, rarely do these "best [food item] in [location]" lists (even the more reputable ones) deliver anything better than a marginally better dish. Sometimes even a lesser one because the author's personal preferences were different from yours or you craved a particular taste that was underrepresented in the food. I don't think I've ever gone out to one of these places and had my expectations matched - you basically wait in line for so long that your mind convinces you it was better than everything else to justify the wait. Living in NYC made me shake my head every weekend; seeing people lined up multiple hours for "the best" weekend brunch when there were countless top-notch options right down the street was just incomprehensible - it's a cultural and social/psychological gimmick to just be at the top spot.
• beat 8y ago
  Way back in the '80s, I worked in the kitchen at a little ice cream and lunch counter place called Great Midwestern. Ronald Reagan visited, and declared the blueberry ice cream "best ice cream in America" (to be fair, it was really excellent). This led to a big boom in business - and more importantly, mandatory visits by GOP presidential candidates in 1987 Iowa, with all the press circus that involved. The owners took advantage of their good fortune and sold the business to someone else, who immediately started to "cut costs" by cheapening the ice cream. We went through two or three other owners, eventually landing on an out-of-state mega-dairy that just repackaged the cheap ice cream they sold in grocery stores - still sold as "best ice cream in America", the Ronald Reagan seal of approval. Luckily, I could at least maintain standards in the kitchen, continuing to deliver all-vegetarian made from scratch soups daily and a nice selection of cold sandwiches made to order. But eventually, it died of neglect.
  • FiveSquared 8y ago
    Which kid were you in the board cast?
    • beat 8y ago
      You mean broadcast? Oh man, my manager wouldn't allow me out of the kitchen when the press was there, for fear of me shooting my mouth off at a candidate. Luckily, the best takedown of a candidate was done by a customer - a PhD physics student who was a daily regular. At some point, GOP candidate Jack Kemp came in, with press in tow. He was touting his support for Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program. When he found an actual physics doctoral student, he asked what the student thought of it. Without blinking - and on national television - he said "The only physicists who think it will work are the ones getting paid to say it will work". It was beautiful.
• trynewideas 8y ago
  It's a "dead dove do not eat" feeling, but I kind of hoped I'd open the HN comments on this one and _not_ see a bunch of engineering solutions. They all miss the point of the story, which is crushingly relevant to startups: If you build a company with people you like and love, and circumstances outside of your control force it to scale in a hurry, those people you like and love are going to get hurt in the process. That's not an engineering problem to fix. Stanich's didn't need an algorithmic order filling solution, it needed to lose the people that made it Stanich's. It was doomed no matter what. It was unscalable; it's unscalability is what imbued it with what Alexander liked about it. The story begins and ends with Stanich's parents and the reason why they started the business in the first place for a _massive_ reason, one that seems to have gone over the heads of most HN commenters (and I'll bet also most people reading it via HN), and that's at least as depressing as the story itself.
  • navinsylvester 8y ago
    Bang on. Right chord. I think this article is a great advise to people running startups. The review is akin to raising outside money.
    • btown 8y ago
      Couldn’t agree more. It’s a weird world where we want founders to be artisans and inventors, but the money can only think “scale now or die.” There are other ways to build a sustainable large-scale business, methodically over time with profitability and a reputation of care for one’s customers. But venture capital isn’t aligned with this type of approach.
      • chrisweekly 8y ago
        Yeah. No citation handy, but I came across an essay describing startups as essentially performing cheap R&D for VCs.
    • chrisweekly 8y ago
      cord (rope) -> chord (musical reference, as in "to strike a chord", ie to resonate) Not nit-picking, just hoping to clarify for non-native English speakers.
• DonHopkins 8y ago
  So restaurant reviews can be weaponized now, huh? Hey everybody, tell all your friends and Yelp and foodie blogs that the BLT Prime by David Burke restaurant in the Washington, D.C. Trump® International Hotel has TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE hamburgers!!! https://dc.eater.com/2017/9/19/16330572/trump-dover-sole-david-burke-dinner-blt-prime https://dc.eater.com/2017/9/19/16330572/trump-dover-sole-dav...
• rthille 8y ago
  My thought for a solution to the food-tourist problem in cases like this is that if you've got ID that says you're local, great you're welcome. If not, well we've got 3-5 slots/day for those...
• everyone 8y ago
  Here what I would have done if I were Stanich (and didnt experience those personal family problems) If you're a regular / local / I know you. you get service as normal. If youre an out of towner coming here on the basis of the review then you must book in advance. and we only book as many of these per day as we can handle. If your an out of towner and just turn up, and we're not booked-out, or happen to be under capacity then you can dine as normal.
• clubm8 8y ago
  This is why I tell no one of my favorite spots. My second favorite bars, restaurants, and nature spots are where I meet coworkers, dates from apps, and acquaintances. Only close friends/partners/family get to know my true favorites - keeps them healthy as long as possible. For example, I know of a cheap, quiet bar in the heart of a major west coast city. It's not perfect, but it's got wifi and cheap drafts and is relatively clean despite beinga dive. I not only take no one there I don't really like, I will actively discourage people if someone notices it on Yelp when we're debating where to go. (Luckily, it has a deceptively low Yelp rating due to the hordes of techies who think being told "buy something to get a key to the bathroom" is equivalent to being spit in the face so I can invoke the magical word "sketchy" and steer my party clear)
  • tokyodude 8y ago
    How will you feel if it goes out of business from not enough patronage or if the owner closes it because it's not meeting his financial requirements for retirement? If the owner just wants a quiet cozy place that's certainly great but maybe the owner wants the place to be 3x as busy or maybe she want's to open a bigger place or 2nd place as soon as she gets enough people and funds.
    • fapjacks 8y ago
      I am particularly sensitive to this issue as I live in a beautiful tropical metropolis which everyone on the planet knows about and is the stereotypical vacation spot and which sees more and more tourists every year. I'm 100% behind OP. If the owner of the business wants to scale, that's their job. If I've found a truly amazing place, I keep it to myself and only maybe tell my closest friends after a lot of careful thought. One word to the wrong person and it will be gone. Loads of stuff here is ephemeral, even if loads of other places are institutions. It's best to just enjoy it while you can. The city and county here are well-known to shut down popular areas that two months ago were a "best-kept secret" before Instagram got a hold of it and now it's almost destroyed by foot traffic. I could post a link to an article in our newspaper from just last week about something being closed for repairs of which, if you are actually from or living in Tokyo, you may have seen pictures making the rounds on Instagram, as it was very popular with Japanese tourists. I live at the far end of that slippery slope and it definitely happens.
• TomMckenny 8y ago
  It's not just burger joints. I tremble every time I see my town mentioned positively knowing that too much publicity will drive out the people who made it a great place with ghastly land valuations.
• microcolonel 8y ago
  This seems like hyperbole chasing hyperbole. I mean, if the lines are huge, you don't have to serve all of them, you don't have to run your staff into the ground, and you don't need to run up a debt of sanitation tasks. If you're too popular for your favourite regulars, you can issue them little cards which get them preferential entry. If you're too popular in general and you're not afraid of scaring away the old guard, raise your prices until the fools go away, if you are afraid of losing the old card, give discounts to card carriers. If they didn't want to scale this humble bar burger enterprise, they could just not scale it, and not grind their staff to a pulp.
• flerchin 8y ago
  Reading between the lines, poor Stanich had a close family member go deep with heroin, if not succumb. That's a burden that's just awful, and completely separate from critic damage. I've found that the rest of a top 10 list is exceptional as well, but usually doesn't have the crazy lines that poor #1 has.
• ericmcer 8y ago
  This kinda sums up how I feel about what the internet has done to ya. Life just feels sort of grey now. If someone recommends a restaurant or book that used to have value. If you sought out their recommendation and felt the same way it was kind of part of our shared experience. Now people are googling a book before I can even finish the title, they are checking the stars on yelp as I tell them about a great restaurant I discovered. By making all these experiences easy to discover all the magic was instantly removed. It’s like turning on a cheat code that shows you where all the treasures in a video game are located, sure you can gather them all with ease, but you lost the whole point of playing.
  • jmknoll 8y ago
    I really like the way you phrased that - following someone's recommendation and it becoming part of your shared experience with that person. I've felt this in the past, but hadn't heard it put into words like that.
• stevewillows 8y ago
  Some restaurants just can't handle the hype. I just read about a family who returned their michelin star [1] for the sake of their own relationships and ultimately their business. > “It got to the stage where it was difficult juggling family life with working five nights a week later in the evening and also doing breakfast for residents, doing all the prep work, keeping on top of the paperwork and admin,” said Kathryn. I admire folks like this who have their priorities straight. If they were to scale up, they'd most likely loose the charm that earned them the star to begin with. Charm seems to be exclusive to smaller establishments, in this context. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/nov/16/checkers-restaurant-michelin-star https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/nov/16/checkers-restau...
• deleted 8y ago
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• choot 8y ago
  There is a simple way to solve this problem. A special startup can he inacted to solve this frequent problem. We'll not use any special card or ID. Showing ID for a burger seems invasive and special loyality card, we can forget to carry it. Blue accounts are loyal customers. Green ones are tourist/one timers. 1. Use colored money concept. 2. If a customer sends money from their mobile wallet more than X times, their account is colored for this particular merchant. If merchant has set a rule, if payment is > X times / Y dollars, then apply 50% discount for A duration/B payments. 3. Anyone not confirming with app, doesn't qualify for any discount. Cash + app will also be supported. Now simply adjust the prices to reach the demand you can keep up with.
• aichi 8y ago
  If it is true local restaurant or pub you should have locals coming regularly. It means they have reservations for whole year on same time at some day. This is true for Prague pub called U Zlateho Tygra. That pub is in city center and in every turist book. Locals have booked tables all the days for whole year. Tourists can sit if locals don't appear or between 3 and 6pm before locals come.
• davesailer 8y ago
  See "The E-Myth Principle is Still Alive and Flourishing" at https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/04/25/the-e-myth-principle-is-still-alive-and-flourishing/#667255625b30 https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/04/25/the-e... "The E-Myth ('Entrepreneurial Myth') is the mistaken belief that most businesses are started by people with tangible business skills, when in fact most are started by 'technicians' who know nothing about running a business. Hence most fail...Let me assure you that in my experience, ...I still see too many businesses started by technicians who haven’t acquired the basic skills or knowledge, or still assume that business acumen is a minor part of the new business equation."