JIM “PAPPY” MOORE: How to Ruin a Franchise

By Jim “Pappy” Moore

Corporate Wienies ruin it all for everyone.  These are NOT the people who create businesses, who nurture them into success.  These are the faceless, soulless number crunchers who think shaving costs by altering a winning product is smart management.

There’s a burger chain I’ve been loyal to for forty years.  Let’s just call it “Quite-a-burger.”  You could always depend upon getting a nice, large, two-handed burger, stuffed with ingredients, surrounding a hearty, large, relatively thick, juicy ground meat patty.  Add jalapenos, and you could count on a jalapeno in every bite.  Add bacon and you could count on biting into bacon every bite.

That burger is no more. That burger has been replaced by a smaller, sadder version that has a thinner, smaller meat patty, with far less fixings.  And if you pay extra to add jalapenos, you’ll get tiny slivers of jalapeno which add about the same amount of taste as you’d get by looking at a photo of a jalapeno while eating their burger.  This isn’t the Quite-a-burger that won Texas.  This is a burger created by some corporate gnome who decided they could alter the winning formula and dramatically cut costs of producing their signature burger.  

The Quite-a-burger used to have buns teeming with the grease from the griddle.  That’s gone.  It used to have large slices of tomato.  Now the slices are small and thin.  At most there are four small dill pickles.  At least they still have plenty of onions, probably because onions are so cheap.  The lettuce?  “Lettuce pray” for greener lettuce.

For four decades I have had brand loyalty to this Texas product, but now I have simply had it with the burger company.  The only thing I ever bought there was the Quite-a-burger.  I’ve never been interested in any of their other dishes.  If I want chicken, or fish, or hot dogs, or other food items, I go somewhere else.  Their burger was the only thing that kept me coming.  Now I’m resigned to their burger merely being another pathetic excuse for a hamburger, robbed of all that made it wonderful.

This kind of bean-counter mandated madness has ruined many businesses which were created and built into something special by entrepreneurs who understood that if you build a great product, people will buy it.  They understood the magic of a blend of tastes, of holding in your hands a real hamburger, and of having those various mixed food juices run over your hands and down your chin.  I get the feeling that the people who create these down-sized imitations of greatness don’t even eat the burgers they have produced.

Quite-a-burger, you were Quite-a-burger.  Now, you’re not.  Thanks, faceless jerk in a suit at headquarters.  You ruined a good thing.

Copyright 2024, Jim “Pappy” Moore, all rights reserved.