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Updated Wednesday, July 14, 2010 10:51 am TWN, By Matthew Barakat, AP



	April Hess prepares a hamburger at Elevation Burger in Potomac, Maryland, on June 23. With a drive-through seemingly on every corner, you might think the market for burgers long ago reached saturation. But the fastest-growing restaurant chain in America last year was Five Guys, which specializes in double-pattied behemoths the size of a softball. (AP) More Photos (2)

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'Better burger' appetite shows that it's insatiable

Despite recent success of better burgers, one of the oldest names in the business has fallen on hard times. Fuddrucker's filed for bankruptcy protection in April. Tristano said he thinks Fuddrucker's problems resulted from large restaurants with high real estate costs.

By contrast, most of the successful better-burger operators locate in low-cost strip malls. It can cost less than US$500,000 to open most better-burger franchises, a third of a McDonald's or Burger King.

Mark Bucher, the founder and vice chairman of BGR The Burger Joint, said he sees room to expand slowly. He plans to keep BGR in the Mid-Atlantic region for now. Bucher says he's been through this before, as a major player in the bagel boom of the '90s, which eventually lost steam.

“The gourmet burger industry will be survival of the fittest,” Bucher said. “Those companies that are getting into the business now are five years too late.”

Five Guys' sizzling expansion had a long prep time.

“It isn't anything we wanted to do. We just kind of got pulled that way” after would-be franchisees continually pitched the concept, founder Jerry Murrell said. He opened his first store in 1986, and through 2001, the company expanded to just five locations — one for each of Murrell's five sons.

Murrell didn't think Five Guys' cooking lent itself to easy replication. The potatoes were flown in fresh but often had slightly different starch contents that required tweaks in cooking times. Burger patties are always hand-formed.

After expanding regionally for a few years, the company began a national expansion two years ago. In 2009, Sales jumped 50 percent to US$453 million, making it the fastest-growing restaurant with sales over US$200 million, according to Technomic.

Murrell relishes the competition.

“If I were choose between opening in a town with 100 burger places and one with none, I'd go to the place with 100 burger places. People eat burgers in that town,” Murrell said. “I like being next to McDonald's.”

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