How Guckenheimer engineered a healthier grill station

Let’s be real: The grill station is traditionally the greasy spoon of your operation. It’s known to your customers as a place to indulge, not a place to eat mindfully. But a new project by Guckenheimer’s top culinary team challenges the unhealthy grill station stereotype in a new brand for grill stations across its accounts.

The BetterBurger brand doesn’t eliminate red meat, but showcases nine other crave-worthy, upscale burgers that are made from other proteins, some plant, some animal.

“BetterBurger is a brand we created inside of our standard burger offerings,” says Pete Rukule, Los Angeles-based regional culinary director for Guckenheimer. “We are replacing a beef option with seafood, chicken, turkey and pork, and adding better garnishes and menu descriptions to create value and demand.”

When developing the menu for the pilot of BetterBurger, which started in February at two B&I accounts, the culinary team knew they couldn’t just make a plain ol’ turkey burger and expect it to sell. The focus is on upscale ingredients and tempting flavor profiles in burgers like a barbecue turkey burger with chipotle honey-mustard barbecue sauce or a chicken Parmesan burger with housemade marinara sauce, melted mozzarella and fresh basil. Or a Thanksgiving-style turkey burger with cranberry sauce. All the burgers are served on whole-wheat buns.

The tagline for BetterBurger, which piloted at two locations earlier this spring, sums up the goal of the overhaul nicely: “Perfectly balanced to satisfy, without weighing you down.”

Other BetterBurger options include a turkey pesto burger with mushrooms and provolone; an American tilapia burger with malt vinegar and tartar sauce; and a blackened catfish burger with shredded lettuce, tomato and pickled red onion and chipotle peppers. A California-style chicken avocado burger is loaded up with fresh cucumber, tomato, lettuce and an herb-forward green goddess aioli. There’s an ancient grain burger made from quinoa, bulgur and brown rice, flavored up with lemon aioli, kale, tomato and red onion. 

Prior to embarking on the project, Guckenheimer’s culinary team spent a month taking a look at how much red meat was being served at a typical grill station. 

“Before BetterBurger, most of our burger sales came from our standard beef burger option,” Rukule says. “Sales varied by unit, but sales for the burger and other ‘red’ [red is code for least healthiest] options ranged from about 65 percent of to nearly 100 percent of sales.” 

Between February and April, more data was collected. According to sales metrics gathered from POS systems at both accounts in the pilot program, the BetterBurger program has helped reduce selections of the least healthy options at the grill stations by nearly 35 percent. 

Describing the new flavor profiles and communicating the benefits of the burgers has been key in getting customers to try them, Rukule says. To get the message of “made from great stuff but better for you” across to customers, Guckenheimer didn’t miss the boat with marketing. 

“Marketing is key; we’re looking to not just market to people who are already coming to get a burger. We’re looking to attract new customers, showing them that the stereotype of an unhealthy grill station isn’t the case anymore and they can now enjoy this experience more.”

Another positive: BetterBurger’s product cost is about 10 percent cheaper than the basic beef cheeseburger, according to Rukule. But that doesn’t hurt the perceived value. 

“We’ve been able to keep the perceived value of BetterBurger comparable to our basic beef burger by using better marketing and by utilizing small amounts of key special ingredients,” he says, adding that moves are being made to expand the brand to other accounts in the near future.