Important Observation Of The Week – Burgers

The last week has seen us single-handedly cover almost all the street food bases, and at any rate do justice to my personal top three: The market (Warwick Uni, Brindley Place), the collective (Digbeth Dining Club) and the festival (Vale Fest). We were able to road test the asparagus toastie on the public for the first time in retail form, and discovered that when you put long cylindrical objects into two slices of bread and try and manipulate it in mid air, they roll back out again.

More work is possibly needed here. Considering that this was our first new toastie since the Manwich it had quite a lot to live up to, especially as we were trying a premium vegetarian toastie for the first time. Overall the response was good, but uptake was not as strong as we had hoped. I think probably because students are not terribly fussy, as long as it’s cheap.

This brings me to the Important Observation Of The Week.

On Saturday we were trading at Vale Fest in Birmingham. A student organised event to celebrate exams being over in the same way students celebrate everything: with beer, tiny hot pants and dancing about. We were one of only two food outlets for some 5000 students, which are fantastic odds, but despite this we spent the first 7 hours watching the burger queue. At £3.50 were were charging exactly the same price, but for you money you got either a lovingly crafted piece of cheese-based art or a limp, cold bun filled with sad onions, a slice of kraft and one of the most uninspiring slabs of pseudo-burger I have ever consumed.

I know I’m spoilt when it comes to burgers. We live at street food markets and happen to share many events with the finest burgers money can buy, courtesy of either the Original Patty Men or the Meat Shack. Against their burgers I can just about see why people would forsake the noble toastie very, very occasionally. But this was a pathetic, overcooked-yet-still-cold mass-produced waste of mechanically reclaimed cow.

So perhaps it was us. Always worth considering. However subsequent events will show that this was not the case. Instead we spent a disconcerting few hours watching people eye up our menu, and then declare that they just really wanted a burger and head over to join that queue. This last part is key. There is something about burgers that is hard-wired into us and will rear its head whenever hunger strikes. We can’t compete against that, because we’re not fighting against a superior product (certainly not in this case) we’re fighting against a mindset.

The solution, in my mind, is twofold. Number one: we raise our game. Naturally this is pretty much what we’re always going for, what with us being so very corporate and only an agenda away from strategic blue sky thinking outside the box. I whatever remains of our time after all that we continue to make new, humdinging toasties.

Number Two: We quietly infiltrate the British psyche and replace “burger” with “toastie”. It’s a longer game, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. Why exactly do you fancy a burger? Think about it. The only explanation I can come up with is because I just kind of fancy one. This is largely due to the persistent hard work of several global fast food brands, and probably can’t be undone by one old green van. But on the other hand there’s no harm in trying. You’re next, Golden Arches.