It doesn’t matter what you include or exclude with your burger. $13.19 for a burger, fries, and malt is nothing but highway robbery. At that price the burger better jump around in my mouth and play tonsil hockey. Let me get the good stuff out of the way first and then on to the bad stuff.
Good
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It is a good burger. Not the best, not fantastic, but a good burger. I would stack up a Duke’s in Crystal Lake, IL or a Claim Company burger in Northbrook, IL.
Yes, the food does not contain all those bad things like Trans Fats, preservatives, nitrates, etc.
It’s a very hip looking place.
Bad
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There is nothing that is of that much importance to justify $13.19 for a burger, fries, shake meal deal. Nothing. Now I personally have bought my own aged, angus, New York strip from Whole Foods for $25.00/lb and ground my own burger. If that’s what they are doing then I have to ask why are you doing it for a lunch crowd?
The website marvels at the quality of the fries. I work two buildings down and the fries were mush. Worse off was the fact that over half the order was made up 1/2″ pieces. As for their Rule #4, don’t insult the French with this mess.
I can understand giving the number stands and number to people who are eating in but what is up with making the to-go people stand around looking like clowns with them?
I placed my order and stood over to the side waiting for my order. It wasn’t a long wait but after about 5-6 minutes a nice dressed gentleman saw I was number #27 and came over and gave me burger and then took my funny looking number on stick thing. But what he didn’t realize is the poor lady behind the shake counter now has no way to identify for my shake that took 7-8 minutes to get.
Now someone who planned this restaurant decided that having a smoothie/shake bar to handle the drinks would be a great idea. Then they proceeded to make it cramped for two people crossing over each other. Then to make things even better decided to install only (2) blending machines. Hello, McFly! That’s why it takes almost 8 minutes to get a drink and the burgers come out quicker. That’s just plain and simple lopsided thinking.
Suggestions
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1) Don’t charge $0.89 cents for the cheese.
2) Fix you smoothie/shake station: give them some room to work and get them some more blenders.
3) Get rid of the number sticks for to go people, that’s just dorky and dumb
4) Fix your overall pricing. It’s an anchor and you will sink with it.
Overall
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First, I will not go back there just because of the price. Al’s Beef, which is around the corner, will kill your fries everyday of the week. Second, because of the price I would rather go Kent College or Gold Coast Dogs for a burger. Big prices and nothing to back it up. I did get some fancy black label Heinz to go Ketchups; talk about focusing on the wrong details.
My bet is that come June 2012 there will be a for sale sign there or a new restaurant.
Receipt Breakdown
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Vanilla Malt – 3.89
Fries 2 – 1.99
Epic burger – 5.99
Cheddar Ch. – 0.89
Sub Total: – 12.76
Meal Disc. – .88 (basically a free slice of cheese!
Tax. – 1.31
TOTAL – 13.19 <--- WOW!!!!