
I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It - wallflower
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/portland/stanichs-closed-will-it-reopen-burger-quest
======
trynewideas
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
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
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
Yeah. No citation handy, but I came across an essay describing startups as
essentially performing cheap R&D for VCs.

------
joezydeco
Let's hear from a local about what really happened to Stanich's:

[https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-
not-t...](https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-not-to-be-
the-best#7564793)

"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."

~~~
purplezooey
Do they really call the place where the orders are picked up "the pass"? :)

~~~
jacurtis
Yeah, it's short for "the pass thru". Older restaurants and diners used to cut
a hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining area to pass food through.
So yes it became known as "the pass". This is where your food sits and
collects before it comes out to your table.

It's also where waitstaff pass tickets through to the kitchen. Lots of passing
going on back and forth. Hence "the pass".

------
tptacek
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_

~~~
mabbo
> 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
You 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.

~~~
blt
I 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.

~~~
Aeolun
Why would you ever expect more than a well executed fast food style burger
from, well, a burger. That’s literally what burger means as far as I’m
concerned.

~~~
umanwizard
There are certainly non-fast-food restaurants that sell burgers.

To give a random example that comes to mind: the burger is one of the most
iconic/famous things on the menu at the Spotted Pig, which has a Michelin
star. You can't really compare it to McDonald's any more than you could
compare any other dish to the fast food version.

------
narrator
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
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
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
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.

~~~
jcater
I live in a touristy area with lots of great, but high demand and
correspondingly high priced, restaurants.

Several of the local places do "frequent diner/visitor" loyalty cards, where
the 5th or 9th meal (for restaurants), coffee (coffee shops), etc are free.
This offsets the otherwise high prices charged on menu items.

Also, once a year (during the off season, of course), the local high school
sells a booster card that gets a percent discount off for the entire year at
numerous local places.

This is of course not unique to a touristy area, but I find myself using them
far more often than in other places I've lived.

------
LargeWu
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.

~~~
paavoova
Yeah, strangely enough, food and its accompanying culture is one of the most
prevalent socially acceptable, encouraged biases. There's no objective,
empirical stance you can take. Well, sure you can value food based on its
nutritional content, but food and health science is continuously flipping back
and forth on the facts and is overrun with pop-science, stirring confusing to
no end. But most of all, your brain doesn't care about nutritional value once
something is in your mouth.

"I don't like onions." "Oh, how can that be?" "Well, uh, they taste bad, I
avoid them." "Well, I think they're great [because I like them]."

And yet these kinds of worthless opinions are given credence to no end in all
levels of discourse from casual small talk to high-class cuisine.

~~~
passwordreset
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three
distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For
instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?'
the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question
'Where shall we have lunch?”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

:)

------
beat
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
Which kid were you in the board cast?

~~~
beat
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.

------
kyledrake
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.

------
jacquesm
"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
> 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.

~~~
bartread
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
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.

------
admn2
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
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
Supply side economics dominates. There is no such thing as authentic demand.

~~~
afterburner
Isn't the lesson here rather that monopolies, good management, and quality
products are good for business?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Shake Shack is more about hyping just-ok products. There are better (and
cheaper) burgers to be had without the megadosing of salt to compensate for a
mediocre blend. They keep the seats filled because they worked the hype
machine and the tourists flock there.

------
goshx
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
That can happen when the votes all occur in short succession.

~~~
amoorthy
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
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....

------
Altaer
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.

~~~
antisthenes
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
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.

------
gerbilly
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
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/blogge...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/blogger-
bombarded-with-abuse-over-fake-pancakes-snap/news-
story/3e3685be13cefbeeee33787bbb99d24c)

~~~
jkestner
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-
eve...](https://www.wired.com/2015/09/camera-wont-let-take-photo-everyone-
else/)

------
cpeterso
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)

------
GNOMES
Wow, I planned on only skimming the article because I figured it was
clickbait... Loved every minute of this piece.

~~~
garysahota93
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!

------
sizzzzlerz
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
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
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].

------
harbie
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
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
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...

------
evo_9
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.

------
JPKab
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.

~~~
siphor
do you know of a pair of better/cheaper over the ear noise cancelling
headphones?

~~~
l0b0
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
They're not exactly cheap, but the Bose QC headphones are superb.

------
stagger87
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
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

~~~
wallflower
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
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
Thank you for letting us know.

------
tracker1
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.

------
scythe
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.)

------
bearcobra
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.

------
clubm8
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
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.

~~~
clubm8
>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?

No place I've done this with has gone out of business yet. Keep in mind - I
found it. Others will too.

~~~
tokyodude
Well, another POV is that some people like to help others. If the owner wants
more business then helping them is spreading the word. Yea, it sucks you don't
get to keep your special place but I'd rather help my friends achieve their
goals than hold them back for my own selfish reasons.

If I had a friend running a restaurant or bar and they told me "don't spread
the word I want this place to stay cozy" then of course I'd respect their
wishes. If on the other hand they want to grow then I'd help them spread the
word.

~~~
clubm8
>Well, another POV is that some people like to help others.

Is causing my favorite bar to have an increase in customers, to the point that
it's unable to deliver the good service I came to enjoy, a good thing? Said
bar then starts to tweak things - they hire more staff, raise prices.

Next thing you know, the qualities that made people to flock to said bar are
gone, customers die dow, and the owner is forced to lay people off and
possibly is stuck with a bill for equipment or refurbishings they can't cover.
This kills the bar.

I've seen it happen more than once.

Again, as I said: people before me found the bar, and people after me will
too.

------
ryanwaggoner
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.

------
ericmcer
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
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.

------
soneca
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?"_

------
pj_mukh
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.

~~~
foobarchu
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
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.

------
blairanderson
The saddest thing about this link is a huge fucking spammy email popup. Would
downvote if I could.

~~~
magic_beans
That's absolutely not the journalist's fault.

------
cronix
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.

------
aichi
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
See "The E-Myth Principle is Still Alive and Flourishing" at
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/04/25/the-e...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/04/25/the-
e-myth-principle-is-still-alive-and-flourishing/#667255625b30)

"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."

------
stevewillows
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-
restau...](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/nov/16/checkers-restaurant-
michelin-star)

------
aeriklawson
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.

------
huangc10
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.

------
cf498
It makes a great point about mass tourism in general and what it does to the
local population.

------
sureaboutthis
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.

------
bookofjoe
"The Tragedy of the
Commons":[https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of...](https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf)

------
choot
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.

------
phlakaton
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. ;-)

------
Applejinx
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.

------
sergiotapia
>“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.

------
libraryatnight
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.

------
everyone
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.

------
olalonde
I wonder if raising prices quite a bit would have helped.

~~~
brewdad
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
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
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.

------
andrewljohnson
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.

------
lanius
Are there similar stories of promising tech companies that achieved overnight
fame but couldn't handle it and shut down?

------
flerchin
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.

------
arprocter
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?

------
rthille
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...

------
JimA
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.

------
TomMckenny
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.

------
code_duck
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.

------
jonplackett
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.

------
Markoff
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

------
king_panic
Unpopular opinion: Good at cooking, bad at business.

------
sandov
Unclosable popup.

~~~
JimiofEden
[https://i.imgur.com/Fz8RwgQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/Fz8RwgQ.png)

Or you could just click the x

~~~
sandov
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.

------
techsin101
Uh temporary surge pricing??, anyone !?

------
DonHopkins
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-
dav...](https://dc.eater.com/2017/9/19/16330572/trump-dover-sole-david-burke-
dinner-blt-prime)

------
baby
The title is too clickbaity for me to read it. Tl;dr?

~~~
Domenic_S
The article is worth your time.

------
ddingus
: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
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?

------
IncRnd
>> 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.

