In Taipei there are an insane number of hamburger restaurants. Just this past year I noticed seven new ones open, on top of the twenty or so that I have been to around the city. I'm sure there are many more out there.
Out of all of them, this one pictured above "1885" was my favorite for awhile. However it lost that title a few months after opening when they started putting too much black pepper in their meat. It's so strong that you can't even taste the burger now.
In my eyes the true champion of the burger wars was a place called Burger Stop. They were a bit unique in that instead of offering the standard 1/3rd pound patty, they offered a very thin patty that somehow had more flavor than any other place in Taipei.
Unfortunately that store is gone now. The owners moved back to America. I liked the burgers so much that I was actually in talks with them about taking over the store when they left. I put a lot of consideration into it but in the end I couldn't solve the biggest problem. That being, how to beat popularity.
I've mentioned a few times before that popularity is everything in Taipei. Quality, price, location, etc. are all way down on the list. This can be both a curse and blessing. It means that the restaurants I like while for me the taste the best, are usually not crowded because they are not the popular place. But it also means they are in danger of closing down because no customers.
This is what happened to Burger Stop. While it had the best burgers around, it just couldn't get the traffic that "Evan's" got. Evan's is the most popular burger spot in the city, with not only more than one location, but also one location has two seating locations in two separate buildings nearby. (This is actually quite common in Taiwan, if a restaurant has too many customers, they will rent another location nearby and just have seating there, and the servers will walk the food from the main restaurant to the customers dining in the other location).
So this was the problem I couldn't figure out how to solve. The way that whenever Taiwanese want to get together with friends, they choose Evan's. When they want to have a small "reunion" with their friends from elementary school, junior high, etc., they go to Evan's. (oops, another note. there are no official school reunions where everybody goes back after ten years to catch up, so the taiwanese version of a reunion is just getting in contact with a group of friends from your school days and get together for a meal. however this happens maybe once every three months, not once after ten years). When people want to just hang out after work, they choose Evan's.
So how to fight this? How to make people suddenly prefer the "best" food rather than the most popular? One thing I can tell you is that like most popular places the food at Evan's is not very good. This has been an admission from many Taiwanese. But the food is not the point right? It's that people can go someplace and feel cool.
Through all this though, I would like to one day open up my own place. I have a few different ideas about it. But instead of trying to make it a popular place, I'm planning a place where I can profit other ways so it need not be the popular place.
