According to NPD Group, Americans ordered 9 billion burgers in 2014. Even President Obama loves a good burger. This week Bizologie lunched at Shake Shack, which got us thinking about all the “Better Burger” restaurant choices. According to Morgan Stanley, the better burger category where “fast food and fast casual meet”, is a $3 billion market. Better burger restaurants include Five Guys, In-N-Out, Smashburger, etc. This is a small fraction of the overall US “limited service burger” market which is $72 billion.
While Five Guys has the biggest market share with $1,138MM in sales, our Chief Research Analyst, April points out that they don’t have shakes so they don’t make her top list.
Source: How SHAK Stacks up, Morgan Stanley, February 24, 2015
Our local Austin favorites include Hopdoddy for their Nutella & Chocolate Pretzel shakes and P. Terry’s who serves oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. You can see that Bizologie puts a little more focus on the dessert portion of the menu.
Morgan Stanley provides a breakdown of the cost for the average cheeseburger meal. BurgerFi breaks the bank at $11.51. Austin’s P. Terry’s cheeseburger combo coming in at just $5.90, makes it one of the least expensive of all the better burger choices along with In-N-Out and Burgerville.
Source: How SHAK Stacks up, Morgan Stanley, February 24, 2015
According to Custom Culinary’s Top Trends for 2015, consumers are getting creative with their burger toppings, too. Everything from Sriracha to brisket to marmalades and jams. And though it’s not listed here, we’ve seen many local restaurants adding a fried egg on top. Want to further your burger education with some empirical evidence? Eater has a list of The 21 Essential Hamburgers of America.
Source: Top Culinary Trends 2015, Custom Culinary