Over the past few months there have been a couple articles here on OurPDX featuring Burgerville, a local business that does things a bit differently than most of their fast food competitors. Jeremy wrote a piece in April talking about Burgerville’s local, sustainable practices, and last month I wrote a recap of a tweetup where I tried out Burgerville’s new beer and wine service at their Salmon Creek location.
A couple weeks ago, I was invited to chat with Jeff Harvey, CEO of Burgerville, to learn a bit more about the company and their plans. I enjoyed our talk, learning that their composting program actually saves money compared to traditional garbage service. One of the big questions on everyone’s mind is when and if the beer and wine program will expand to other locations. After a couple more months of the trial program at Salmon Creek, they’ll be evaluating the results and looking at rolling it out to other locations. There aren’t any plans to spread the program to every location, but instead they’ll be expanding it to restaurants that make sense from a marketing standpoint as well as physical logistics (the beer and wine service is physically separated from the food service).
I sampled Burgerville’s two new fresh strawberry dishes; there are strawberry griddle cakes for breakfast ($3.99) and a balsamic strawberry goat cheese panino sandwich (pictured, $4.29). The idea of a strawberry sandwich struck me as strange at first, but the balsamic-marinated strawberries were a nice mixture of tangy and sweet. The goat cheese and arugula worked well with the fruit. I’d definitely recommend that folks check it out.
We talked a bit about Burgerville’s use of social media, and it was refreshing to hear Mr. Harvey respond that the reason they’re using social media is because they “have to be” in order to build relationships with their audience. It’s great to see a local company hold to its local traditions while embracing change in order to grow their business.
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I hope BurgerVille will inspire other companies to use sustainable practices. Kudos to them for using social media to listen to their customers. It shows that they care.
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