Hello, and welcome back to Hamburger Business Review!

Announcing Season 2
We are in the early planning for our second season of the podcast, but so much is happening in the world of Hamburger Business we decided to use the email feature of Substack to share what we’re reading and talking about internally and what we’re working on for the next season.
Our first ever episode of Hamburger Business Review was a test pilot where we dove into a Harvard Business Review case study from 1990 about McDonald’s and the Environment.
Choose Your Own Case Study
As we kick off the second season we’re going to look at the evolution of caring about the environment via the new corporate focus on sustainability. There are a few case studies we’re considering launching with and we’d love your feedback! Which case study should kick off Season 2?
The title “Where’s the (Sustainable) Beef?” is just too good which makes this poll a little unfair, but perhaps there some other supply chain stans and decarbonizing fiends out there?
Working at the Hamburger Restaurant
A new feature of Season 2 will be updates from the front lines of the burger wars. Mike now has a job at a hamburger restaurant and is learning the ins and outs of what’s it like to make a living in the fast paced and highly competitive world of the southern California burger battles.
Other Perspectives
We might also hear from Mike’s partner Kathryn about what it’s like to date a “burger boy” and how his career shift (and his early morning shifts!) impact their relationship. Mike is also starting to be active on the various McD subreddits and will surface interesting posts like What to do because we're being forced to work during a major category 5 hurricane? which was unfortunately deleted by the user but you get the idea.
Every McDonald’s in Manhattan
Zach has been on the elliptical machine, training for his third attempt to eat at every McDonald’s in Manhattan within 24 hours. What started when his partner Suzannah took a 24 hour shift at the hospital on Thanksgiving of 2022 has become an annual ritual-cum-fitness benchmark that will be opened up as an extreme walking tour in 2025. This November he’s taking one more solo trot against the clock.
In so doing he has fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole of current and past restaurant locations in Manhattan. From going through microfilm of old phonebooks at the New York Public Library, massaging those entries into geospatial data and making his own map with open source GIS tools, he hopes to not just find the fastest theoretical route to every restaurant but also become one of the leading experts on America’s number one hamburger chain in America’s largest city. We’ll be sharing some really great maps and photos of the old locations.
Calories In / Calories Out
Mike has been comparing the calorie count of the McDonald’s menu to the amount he burns on a typical bike ride. His small, medium, and long routes are now thought of as the McDouble, the Big Mac, and the Double Bacon QPC. Here’s a rough draft:
Serving orders at the Hamburger restaurant and seeing a wide variety of orders also made Mike wonder about what the most efficient meal at McDonald’s is from a price per calorie perspective. Of the three sandwiches above the price per calorie is $0.009 for the McDouble, $0.01 for the Big Mac, and $0.008 for the Double Bacon QPC. Does this approximation of 1 cent per calorie hold up for the rest of the menu?
News and Finance
One of the neat features of Substack is that you can insert financial charts. So we can keep a regular look at the MCD 0.00%↑ share price.
And as we watch the number rise and occasionally fall we'll look to see what is happening in the world of McDonald’s, the wider world of the hamburger business, and the even wider world of the Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR) industry.
For example, the Wall Street Journal looks at the new Chicken Big Mac and sees a business and hospitality trend of using chicken as a protein on the ride (WSJ 🔒).
Just in the last week we’ve seen some really fascinating stories, and we could do a whole episode or newsletter about any one of these:
Headline Round Up
McDonald’s Sues Major Beef Suppliers for Alleged Price-Fixing Conspiracy
McDonald’s customers are cutting back on fries. Its biggest supplier is cutting jobs
What’s McDonnell’s? Here’s why McDonald’s created a dupe restaurant in Los Angeles
How the Mets and McDonald’s are capitalizing on the ‘Grimace effect’
In these headlines we see more examples of our theory that there is nothing in the world McDonald’s doesn’t touch. Beef price fixing, big french fry, fake knock-off restaurants as marketing ploys, the Eagles, baseball, and more are all connected to McDonald’s in these five stories.
Stay Tuned…
Using the full features of the Substack platform we’re expanding Season 2 into more than just a podcast. We look forward to connecting with our readers and listeners, bring in guests to the newsletter and the podcast, and keeping up a regular conversation as we dive back into the burger business.
For those that were supporting us in Season 1 we want to say thanks again so much! We won’t be turning the subscriptions back on until the podcast launches but your support helps us put in the quality time to make the best version of this we can. We’d really appreciate your support for season two:
And please spread the word if you know anyone else who loves the intersection of business and hamburgers. It’s a weird place to hang out, but we’ve found it tells a lot about the wider world.
Yours,
Mike & Zach