9 ms·
> 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 ho
by mabbo 8y ago
> 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.
- tptacek 8y agoYou 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 Stanich is actually accomplishing with his burger. The average foodie tourist is unlikely to arrive armed with that context; they'll pay $30 for the burger, expect a revelation, and leave unhappy.
- tanderson92 8y agoThanks for this comment thread, I found it really insightful. Nuance on HN?!
- skrebbel 8y ago> Nuance on HN?! Where else‽
- yesenadam 8y agoOMG 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 8y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 8y ago¿¡
- yesenadam 8y agoThis page (in the comments at the bottom of the page) has spanish-speakers using both that and the reversed version, and even the 'gnaborretni' (inverted interrobang) : https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/137/origin-and-usage-of-and https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/137/origin-and-u...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sgc 8y agoSure, but raising prices by 20% might not do that, but cut the line by 60% without eliminating it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- blt 8y agoI 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.
- FiveSquared 8y agoIn n out is good, but it’s still fast food. That is true. Also, people act it’s Exclaburger instead of a good meal.
- kbenson 8y agoThat's exactly what it is, a very well executed fast food burger. I mean, I'm not going to trade it for a real good local burger joint burger (Superburger in my area), but that joint burger is 2x times the size plus fixings (depending on what's ordered) and costs 3x the In-n-out burger, and doesn't have a drive through. When you start adding all the variables in, the picture becomes clear. Oh, and as someone that gets fast food burgers once every week or two, Wendy's has always been particularly high on my list, and McDonald's recent switch to non-frozen patties for quarter pounders has also significantly raised the quality of that product. Even so, In-n-out is still better overall than either in my opinion.
- umanwizard 8y agoAs crazy as it sounds, there are people who are adamant that In & Out is not just good relative to fast food, but in fact one of the finest places you can eat, at any price. Source: I've spoken with a few.
- drdeadringer 8y agoIn the city I live in, a proposal for an In & Out came up. It split down the city in half for reasons; traffic, "In & Out is great", "In & Out is awful", and so forth. Nothing's come of it and as far as I know the lot remains defunct. Elsewise I too encounter people who hold In & Out on a pedestal simply because of their food. Personally, I've tried and honestly but I just can't. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Jack In The Box all have better burgers and fries than In & Out for me, but say that to the devout and you'll be shown the door faster than they'll tell you to go to Hell. It's amazing.
- mabbo 8y agoThere 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.
- idontpost 8y agoI feel like this should be fairly obvious business economics. If there is too much demand for your product for you to service, you should raise your prices until the demand matches what you can produce. It's basic supply and demand. The opposite applies as well. If you have excess capacity that's going unused, you should lower your prices (down to the marginal cost anyway).
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoOf course there's a ceiling, but you're assuming the ceiling is based on the burger. It's not. It's based on the demand for the burger, and that demand is way, way higher than the supply, so the ceiling is higher than the current price. Pretty simple. And yes, you can only raise it to a certain point, but you only need to raise it to a certain point: that certain point is the ceiling. And you don't need to jump from $10 to $30 all at once. You just need to keep raising the price until you find the ceiling where your demand is more reasonable. It's probably more like 30-50% more, rather than 200% more, but who knows. Or better yet, charge more for peak times (like by offering a killer happy hour special during the slow times) to smooth out demand and also serve people who don't want to pay $30 for a burger. Pricing that is based on cost plus some margin for overhead is so dumb. Price based on demand!
- tptacek 8y agoThis is a terrible term but I'll use it because it works here: the genre of burger we are talking about here is "cheap burger" (I mean that as a quality/experience descriptor, not price). It's a relatively thin, wide ground chuck patty on a good-but-standard bun; the only "interesting" ingredient they use is hamburger relish. So, yeah I am explicitly saying that the price ceiling and the demand for the burger aren't as neatly related as it looks, because the substitutes for this particular burger are going to be very close to it in quality (it's possible that for something close to 50% of patrons, this burger will be perceived as "worse" than other cheap burgers they've had, because opinions vary). If this was that Raoul's burger, where it's ground short rib and brisket with a triple cream brie and a cognac cream dipping sauce, I'd be right there with you. But Stanich is apparently just a cheap diner burger very well executed (in Alexander's estimation, but I have no reason to doubt him). If you charge $30 for that, people will pay (once), and then feel ripped off. For a little while. Then word will get out. It probably is the best cheap diner burger in America! The dude did the research! I'm just saying, you probably can't charge $30 for a cheap burger, sustainably. You'll do OK in the short term, and then irreversibly harm the business. Scaling out makes a lot more sense. He probably should franchise.
- pdonis 8y ago
- crazygringo 8y agoExactly. There's a fine line between a reasonable price with a long line... and raising it where people say "they're price gouging, ugh!" and lose your customers forever because you're no longer someone with a passion for the best burger, you're a sellout for the money. Supply and demand doesn't work as smoothly as you think. It's the same reason why huge TicketMaster fees exist -- so artists can sell tickets at a "fair" price (any higher would piss off fans) and TM takes the flak for all the "fees", many of which go to the artist/management in the end anyways. Or why shows sell out instead of raising prices -- people simply revolt at pricing they perceive as "unfair". And once they do, it's hard to get the good will back.
- yholio 8y agoA simple fix for that is to put up a big sign that says "Tourist tax in effect" and make a $25 rebate for any regular customer or person that can prove a local address; or simply assert with a straight face to the staff they live on this and this street. It's a bit of a hassle for the locals but the place is saved. Sure, the tourists will attack you on Yelp and Instagram and accuse you of price gouging. But to hell with them and their opinion, on the long run only the opinion of the locals matters.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> put up a big sign that says "Tourist tax in effect" No need to be that adversarial. Put up a high price and advertise a discount for anyone who can show ID with a local address.
- idontpost 8y agoThis is already very common in places with lots of rich tourists but low local incomes. Hawaii, for example.
- fapjacks 8y agoThat's how it works where I live. You show your driver's license, you get the local discount.
- notyourday 8y ago> 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 Stanich is actually accomplishing with his burger. The average foodie tourist is unlikely to arrive armed with that context; they'll pay $30 for the burger, expect a revelation, and leave unhappy. Rubbish. Here's 2006 list of burgers that you must have before you die from GQ: https://www.gq.com/story/hamburger-death-eat https://www.gq.com/story/hamburger-death-eat By Alan Richman who "traveled 23,750 miles and consumed more than 150,000 calories while taking the measure of 162 burgers across the country—with one goal: To find you the best damned assemblage of ground beef and buns this country serves up" -- the boss of a Thrillist writer probably did not even know about that infamous GQ list. * Number 1 in NYC : Peter Luger. Still there. Accolades did not kill it. * Number 1 in Philadelphia : Rouge. Rouge burger - still there. Restaurant is going downhill but it has changed owners multiple times -- Neil, who opened it, died a couple of weeks ago. * Number 1 in Philadelphia (small sliders) : Barclay's Prime - of course it is also still there. Oh, and yes Rouge raised its prices to handle the load that article generated - the place maybe sat 50, including the bar. And now since it is not as popular as it once was, the prices are lower. > 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 was just not very good as the closure of his favorite burger places demonstrated.
- tptacek 8y agoThe Rouge burger was a custom meat blend on challah with gruyere. It's a chef burger. What we're talking about is a ground chuck diner burger on a sesame bun. If this was the Raoul burger, 12 served a day, ground short rib and brisket, I'd be right there with you.
- notyourday 8y agoRouge burger was not a custom meat blend. It was a rouge steak ground from steak into ground meat for the burger as the burger was ordered because there was no space in the kitchen - it was that small. But that's not the point - the list was of burgers: roll, meat patty, cheese, maybe some other stuff. The one that he raved about had gooish cheese etc. Were there also caramelized onions? It was the "we too can make a burger like those fancy places and not a greasy spoon diner next door". Burger is a burger. The better the burger the higher its price could be if there are people willing to wait for it. Chef's burger or no chef's burger - i mean hell, NY Burger Co's burgers beat some of the chef's burgers.
- megablast 8y ago> He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is This is one way to put it. Lets pretend that every burger isn't different, every cook isn't different, ingredients aren't the same from day to day, etc... Then it all becomes having the right combination on the day you get there. And this ignores how the reviewer is feeling, and what they ate and drank already that day and the day before.
- mikemotherwell 8y agoThe key isn't just higher prices. It is long term revenue from people who are liekly to buy repeatedly. My solution would be $30 for tourists, $6 for anyone with a Portland ID and a loyalty card that you get in three seconds. That solves both issues mentioned (one-off, buckelist tickers and loyalty to locals).
- sixQuarks 8y agoSolution 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
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThat'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.
- jonnycomputer 8y agoHe would, in all likelihood, lose his regulars that had come in for years. For people who just want to make a living, and enjoy life doing it, that might be like losing all your friends.
- trynewideas 8y agoThe article explicitly goes into this, and in my reading at least is the entire point of the story.
- megablast 8y agoNor your regulars. And that is what they care about, not the fad of people coming in from a list.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y agoI wonder how price-insensitive people pursuing the 'best burger' are. They've probably made a trip to go eat it, what's another $5 or $10?
- tptacek 8y agoThat's exactly the problem! All the viable price increases won't deter the tourists.