tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Burger Time
Owner -- Privately held
Primary Operating Region -- Upper Midwest
Number of Locations -- 12 (2007)

It was the eighties in beautiful Grand Forks.  A guy comes to town to start a double-drive-thru burger joint that sounded like a clone to Burger Time in Fargo.  Burger Time was already a mandatory stop during Fargo road trips.  They were a whole new concept...a double-drive-thru building that sold really big, beautiful burgers, really cheap...under a buck at the time.  A lot less than McDonald's and Burger King.  Word-of-mouth was as good as a mouthful of their burger.

So the guy inquired about purchasing some frontage from a used car lot.  The owners wanted to know what he was going to do there.  He laid out the whole business plan.  The owners didn't sell...They built their OWN double-drive-thru cheap hamburger stand.  Seemingly everybody wanted in on the double-drive-thru fad.  Original guy opened "Classic Burgers", which WAS Burger Time in everything but the name, in another location.  Classic Burgers was eventually converted into a Burger Time that still operates as of this writing.  That other hamburger place has long since been demolished.

Fargo-based Burger Time debuted in 1987.  It was my first experience with the double drive-thru cheap burger concept.  The double-drive-thru, with its simple and cheap "Bigger Better Burger", fries, and pop, was a smash.  A second location opened a year later, then a few here and there.  Growth apparently stopped completely after 1997, until Burger Time was sold in 2004 to Sterion Incorporated, a manufacturer of medical products, by Fargo investor Doug Geeslin, the chain's second owner.  

Sterion CEO Kenneth Brimmer used to have his hands in the Rainforest Cafe chain.  Sterion changed their name to STEN Corporation, and envisioned growth of their company to be focused around Burger Time, hoping for maybe a hundred units across the Midwest over the next few years.  They expanded the menu to include shakes, chili, and more.  They opened two locations in 2005 and one in 2006.  They also acquired what was left of Hot n' Now out of bankruptcy.  Apparently things weren't going the way they'd hoped because they sold Burger Time in 2007 to Burger Time president Gary Copperud and moved on to their "finance" operations (apparently they're financing used car sales, maybe even selling them).  Copperud closed a couple of locations (the ones closest to ME, of course) and trimmed back the menu, removing the chili and shakes, amongst other things.  Who knows what happened to Hot n' Now.

The 1/3 lb "Bigger Burger" was an astounding $1.69 under Sterion (2005) but has rised dramatically in price since.  It's charbroiled to order and topped similar to a Wendy's Classic Single.  It's very impressive looking and tastes great.   

Still, it's good food and carries an overall impression of being inexpensive.

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