ON THE BUILDBOARD CHART/CHARTBEAT:

In a week when the Buildboard chart simply took off, the Top-10 burgers sold 59% more than the previous week and without a single new entry into the chart. It was a week in which JFAVUZZA, whose Multigrain-Turkey-Spinach & Garlic-Avocado-Goat Cheese-Lettuce-Pickles-Hummus-Tzatziki Better Turkey Burger increased its sales by 58% to retain the #1 spot from AHARRIS’S CaliBurger, which grew 29% and yet slipped further behind. It was a week in which RODGERSMG’S MGR Lamb Burger and NEWMANRA’S Cali4nication increased sales 44% and 64% respectively, only to stand still, but looking over their backs at hard charging Angela’s Veggie, by Angela1126 which increased sales a whopping 150% moving from #6 to snatch the #5 spot from #winning burger, ANTYSON’S tongue-in-cheek tribute to “his messiness” Charlie Sheen, which lost ground in spite of a 55% bounce in sales. It was a week that saw BOLO26’S BEEF BURgITTO jump one place to #7 on a 50% increase in sales and J. LIN-Sane! by jmarmole pick and roll two places on a Lin-sane 200% increase in sales. It was a week in which kamitera’S Bento Box Burger treaded water at #9 despite a 100% increase in sales, and DAFOO’S French Connection dropped 3 places from #7 to #10 despite maintaining its own. In a wild week in which sales of the Buildboard chart reached an all-time high, it seems right to analyze the importance of a name/brand in creating a chart hit.

 

There are 4 paths to naming a Buildboard Chart hit:

  

·       TILIS burgers make up 50% of the chart sales and are best exemplified by the recently stunning Better Turkey Burger, which has come from nowhere in 4 weeks to lead the pack. 

 

 

·     EOaL burgers make up 27% of the current chart and are best exemplified by the Caliburger, which with 1497 units sold is our #1 best-selling user-build ever!  

 

  ·     LC burgers make up 14% of the current chart with jmarmole’S J. LIN-Sane! being the perfect example of the instant rewards of opportunism.

 


·     Eoac burgers make up 8% of the current chart with both Bento Box Burger and French Connection representing this latest naming trend. 

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS PERKS

 Last Thursday we celebrated the official launch of 4food’s partnership with LevelUp, a new digital customer loyalty program. As part of their new promotional campaign, LevelUp brand ambassadors were on site to show guests how simple it is to download and use their app. And for doing so, over 100 of our guests were treated to a free lunch courtesy of the LevelUp crew.

This remarkably clever service assigns a personal QR code to each member that connects to a credit card account of their choosing and with instant email receipts. The QR code is then stored on their smartphone, which customers can use to pay for goods and services at hundreds of restaurants and retailers in New York City, and in other major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. In exchange for the convenience and efficiency of using your phone to pay for lunch, LevelUp rewards your loyalty with credits. Each day they feature new merchants for you to try out, and they provide you with credit to spend. The first time you pay with LevelUp at any merchant, you’ll immediately get credit applied to your purchase. As you go back, you’ll unlock more credit to use on whatever you want at that merchant. It just goes to show that when you pay with LevelUp good things do happen!

ON THE BUILDBOARD CHART/CHARTBEAT:

The Buildboard Chart represents the valiant efforts of 4foodies seeking to create the-best-damn-burger-in-the-world, and if you fail the first time, then dig deep, try harder, and try again - who knows you could come out of nowhere and create a monster hit like JFAVUZZA'S Multigrain-Turkey-Spinach & Garlic-Avocado-Goat Cheese-Lettuce-Pickles-Hummus-Tzatziki Better Turkey Burger which tops the chart for the second week in the past three, stomping all over AHARRIS’S CaliBurger and our all-time sales champ! RODGERSMG’S MGR Lamb Burger and NEWMANRA’S Cali4nication hold strong at the #3 and #4 places yet again and are closely followed by #winning burger at #5, ANTYSON’S delectably satirical tribute to “his messiness” Charlie Sheen. ANGELA1126’S Angela’s Veggie maintains her #6 status, but with the first of the week’s three new entries, DAFOO’S Brioche-Beef-Avocado & Chili Mango-Pancetta Bacon-Goat Cheese-Cranberry-Garlic Mayonnaise French Connection, coming up behind her like Popeye chasing that elevated train in a stolen 1971 Pontiac LeMans. BOLO26’S BEEF BURgITTO keeps the #8 spot, ahead of two more new entries, KAMITERA’S Pressed Rice-Wild Salmon-Spinach & Garlic-Shiitake Mushroom-Lettuce-Garlic Mayonnaise Bento Box Burger, which is the latest take on the food-culture-in-a-bun theme, and J. LIN-Sane! by JMARMOLE, a Multigrain-Beef-Pickled Peppers-Avocado-Swiss Cheese-Lettuce-Tomato-Garlic Mayonnaise-Ketchup ode to a future hall of famer that is de-junking the New York Knicks.

Eat apps!

This is Social Media Week when bloggers, app developers, web designers, and social networkers come out from the dark to play, and this Thursday evening their playground is 4food. Which we take as a pat-on-the-back, because today (almost eighteen months after launch) we are still the only fast food restaurant where you can name and tweet your custom burgers (from over 140 million possible combinations), check-in on a stadium sized media wall, and order in-store from iPad toting hawkers using our own build-a-burger POS.

The event itself is a mobile food app showcase featuring the inventors, bundlers, and marketers of various innovative food and beverage apps. Those who invested the $30 fee get to feast on Gotham’s only truly de-junked fast food while they experience the featured apps in a radically offline social setting. If the apex of food and tech thrills you, 4food on Thursday night is the only place to be.

the whitney:

There are few more subjective opinions than best singer, best movie, best restaurant - but the most meaningful voice of our lifetime belongs to Whitney Houston (RIP), who de-junked popular music as she dragged the gospel out of church kicking and screaming and into millions of lives, becoming the first person to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with seven consecutive singles. Her performance of One Moment in Time at the 1989 Grammy’s is an amazing journey through vulnerability to victory as she soars from the bridge to freedom. At this point we don’t know for sure what killed her, but then again we do! it was junk - drugs for sure but also the weight of our expectations; not black enough for Soul Train, not straight enough for mainstream, and then in spite of the greatest performance of The Star Spangled Banner of all time (the first to take the national anthem into the Top 10 and have it certified platinum), a universal disappointment who has finally found salvation in death.

Yes, we love Whitney.

Linsanity:

No doubt Jeremy Lin has de-junked the New York Knicks and brought vitality back to our Garden and given the TEAM purpose; evidencing (if more was needed) that belief whether it is in a God, a movement, or an ideal, is far more powerful than selfish endeavor. Jeremy, you have the freedom of 4food!

ON THE BUILDBOARD CHART/CHARTBEAT:

Talking Turkey ...

One week after tying beef as the best selling protein, turkey went one better than neck and neck and topped beef by a beak (4food speak for a single sale), garnering a magnificent 38% share of all chart sales along the way.  Appropriately, in a week in which sales of each of the three best-selling user builds of all-time increased and the entire chart grew 26% to an all time high, JFAVUZZA’S Multigrain-Turkey-Spinach & Garlic-Avocado-Goat Cheese-Lettuce-Pickles-Hummus-Tzatziki Better Turkey Burger captured the #1 spot on a 48% increase in sales (following on from last week’s 43% rise). Given the value of social endorsement, or is it just that the value of our social behavior has been set by those in-the-know at Morgan Stanley at over $100 per Facebook User, one has to wonder (or at least speculate) how valuable you all are? On that point, we would ask that Joseph Favuzza, the valuable lad who created the Better Turkey Burger, contact us at info@4food.com as the information in your profile is no longer valid and we want to say hi (and congrats). At #2, less than a webbed foot behind the Better Turkey Burger, is AHARRIS’S all-time best-selling CaliBurger, which loses its perennial perch in spite of a 32% increase in sales! AHARRIS remains an enigma, a recluse, a genius inventor we have yet to meet - one rumor we give little credence to is that AHARRIS is the Executive Chef at a three star Michelin joint here in Gotham, another is that he is a soon-to-be-minted social media billionaire - either way we would love to sort fact from fiction and grab a short interview. NEWMANRA’S Cali4nication wings it all the way from #5 to #3 on a tremendous 50% sales increase, followed by RODGERSMG’S MGR Lamb Burger which flutters down from #3 to #4 despite a meaningful 15% improvement in sales. ALLAMMERICAN’S The American and ANTYSON’S Charlie Sheen tribute #winning burger each peck up a spot to #5 and #6 with The American coming out on top (what The American needs to scale the summit is Clint, fresh from his Super Bowl Chrysler commercial success, to narrate a patriotic burger spot). We are still trying to contact Charlie Sheen to invite him to accept a GoldenBurger on behalf of #winning burger and the American Diabetes Association, but all of our polite inquiries have either met with deaf ears or Charlie just does not realize that #winning burger is the best thing that has happened to him since he discovered narcotics. Help us get “his messiness” to accept the invite and we will feed you $1000 in 4food cash as well multiply our contribution to the ADA ten-fold. The biggest loser this week (apart from Madonna) is ANGELA1126’S Angela’s Veggie, which drops from #4 to #7 where it is tied with SECKLERM’S Life Forever Burger. At #9 is BOLO26’S deliriously named BEEF BURgITTO, a Multigrain-Beef-Chipotle Hominy-Pancetta Bacon-Cheddar-Lettuce-Onion-Tomato-Guacamole derivative of the tortilla original that has the “why didn’t anybody think of it before” obviousness of many big hits. A peek at BOLO26’S account reveals that he or she is also working on a Döner Kebab Burger - point being that BOLO26 is a nascent cultural burgerneer. SIRBORI’S The 1% falls a couple of places from #8 to #10 though its sales were flat - it looks like the “occupy-my-belly” movement just left the 1% behind.