AHC: Save Burger Chef

Yeah, they rebranded themselves as a "healthy options" fast food location in my place, as oxymoronic as it sounds.
Really?
giphy.gif
 
So I reviewed the sandwich-making history of Burger Chef and I don't think it was a failure of innovation that led BC under. As far as I can tell their Big Shef predated the Big Mac and their Super Shef predated the Quarter Pounder, although the Super Shef had lettuce and tomato as well as onion and so might have been more like a Whopper or a Wendy's sandwich. Their Top Shef, a burger with cheese and bacon, arrived decades before McDonald's offered bacon and long before Wendy's did, as well. Their prices also seem competitive, although I don't know how those prices changed in the 80s and early 90s.

Someone mentioned Howard Johnson's -- the failure of Burger Chef seems to rank near to the collapse of Hojo's in the 20th century's restaurant graveyard. Howard Johnson was so firmly seated in the American restaurant marketplace that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey featured branches in space. I'm not sure how many restaurants remained as long ago as OTL 2001. If it was indeed the fact that corporate didn't make big profits, then that does seem easy enough to fix -- the chain prospered from the late 60s to at least the mid 80s, which is enough time for a gradual increase in royalties payable to Corporate. In the end it seems like Burger Chef failed at the highest level; it failed because it wasn't profitable enough for its shareholders and parent companies. I could be wrong as the BC nostalgia sites online don't focus on the latter days of the burger empire, but it doesn't seem like BC failed because it didn't have delicious burgers. Hey, they even had works bars and salad bars -- before anyone else, it seems.

Also, BC had at least one outlet in Canada: https://torontoist.com/2012/10/vintage-toronto-ads-burger-chefs-monstrous-opening/ It had a different menu, with no Big Shef, apparently.
 
@CalBear---you never heard of either Hardees or Burger Chef, correct? But what about Carl Jr?

I do not know at what point Hardees merged with Carl Jr. When I was a kid in the early half of the 1970s, I could compare them because we had Hardees in Panama City, Florida, and Carl Jr. all over southern California. If it were not for having seen one commercial once for Burger Chef, I would be quite mystified by all this talk straight out of a parallel universe to me. But in fact once, and I cannot pin down just where or when, I did see a Burger Chef commercial. It could have been in Los Angeles, where presumably the chain was making an aggressive attempt to penetrate the local market; if so this would have been around 1974-75. I really don't think it would have been in Montgomery, AL because I suppose that was surely Hardees territory; I suppose my next chance to see it would have been when I lived at Langley AFB in the Virginia tidewater, Hampton/Newport News media market. Could BC have been trying to get a foothold there? It seems unlikely to me.

So, somewhere or other I briefly lived where Burger Chef either was on the decline and on the way out, or trying to insinuate its way it. Either way I never happened to drop in and try it. The Los Angeles theory seems strongest to me.

Meanwhile, as far as I could tell from the grassroots and vantage point of a child, Hardees and Carl Jr were quite different, yet shared a lot of similarities, presumably because they were pursuing a similar niche. I'd have to look it up to see just when one acquired control over the other; they persist as separate chains attempting to monopolize different markets. I believe nowadays their product line as largely been "streamlined" into one standard probably with small regional variations.

The combined chain has intruded into political polemics recently, and indeed while I did not notice any political slant of the Hardees chain, Carl Jr. took a hostile stand against gay liberation in the early 1980s--a fact brought to my attention in the summer of 1982 by a Knights of Columbus spokesman who urged his audience to therefore support the chain against those he characterized as the "homosex community" who were boycotting.
 
Aside from the bird houses I recall two other things. First was the mid 1960s promotion where a standard Burger Chef burger & a small coke cost 15 cents. Yes fifteen pennies folks. About the same price as coffee for two and a tip to the waitress in a regular diner, or maybe a couple liters of gas for your Chevy. Quite a deal, you could mollify four screaming children and have change left over. Fries were extra.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
@CalBear---you never heard of either Hardees or Burger Chef, correct? But what about Carl Jr?

I do not know at what point Hardees merged with Carl Jr. When I was a kid in the early half of the 1970s, I could compare them because we had Hardees in Panama City, Florida, and Carl Jr. all over southern California. If it were not for having seen one commercial once for Burger Chef, I would be quite mystified by all this talk straight out of a parallel universe to me. But in fact once, and I cannot pin down just where or when, I did see a Burger Chef commercial. It could have been in Los Angeles, where presumably the chain was making an aggressive attempt to penetrate the local market; if so this would have been around 1974-75. I really don't think it would have been in Montgomery, AL because I suppose that was surely Hardees territory; I suppose my next chance to see it would have been when I lived at Langley AFB in the Virginia tidewater, Hampton/Newport News media market. Could BC have been trying to get a foothold there? It seems unlikely to me.

So, somewhere or other I briefly lived where Burger Chef either was on the decline and on the way out, or trying to insinuate its way it. Either way I never happened to drop in and try it. The Los Angeles theory seems strongest to me.

Meanwhile, as far as I could tell from the grassroots and vantage point of a child, Hardees and Carl Jr were quite different, yet shared a lot of similarities, presumably because they were pursuing a similar niche. I'd have to look it up to see just when one acquired control over the other; they persist as separate chains attempting to monopolize different markets. I believe nowadays their product line as largely been "streamlined" into one standard probably with small regional variations.

The combined chain has intruded into political polemics recently, and indeed while I did not notice any political slant of the Hardees chain, Carl Jr. took a hostile stand against gay liberation in the early 1980s--a fact brought to my attention in the summer of 1982 by a Knights of Columbus spokesman who urged his audience to therefore support the chain against those he characterized as the "homosex community" who were boycotting.
Carl's Jr. is a primarily California chain that wound up buying Hardee's. We have them know, and did back to when I was in my teens. They used to have the most bizarre fries, I think they were baked.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Aside from the bird houses I recall two other things. First was the mid 1960s promotion where a standard Burger Chef burger & a small coke cost 15 cents. Yes fifteen pennies folks. About the same price as coffee for two and a tip to the waitress in a regular diner, or maybe a couple liters of gas for your Chevy. Quite a deal, you could mollify four screaming children and have change left over. Fries were extra.
That was like Der Wienerschnitzel back in the 70s. 18 cent ($0.18) hot dogs (yes DER, not the correct "Das") with that price proudly displayed on the sign. Used to be really good hot dogs too, complete with the "spicy brown" mustard.
 
Burger Chef was an East Coast chain. They were in NJ, NY, Penna, Del, & Md. to my recollection. It was Burger Chef & Jeff (the mascot).

Joho :)

Merry Christmas!

There was a Burger Chef in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan in my youth which I visited a couple of times. From what I recall, it struck me as a fairly generic burger outfit.
 
That was like Der Wienerschnitzel back in the 70s. 18 cent ($0.18) hot dogs (yes DER, not the correct "Das") with that price proudly displayed on the sign. Used to be really good hot dogs too, complete with the "spicy brown" mustard.

Don't remember that one here around Laf In.

Burger Chef was an East Coast chain. They were in NJ, NY, Penna, Del, & Md. to my recollection. It was Burger Chef & Jeff (the mascot).

They were thick around Lafayette & central Indiana. Two local business building conversions in West Lafayette still sport the peaked roof front in their facade.
 
Top