Ask anybody participating in the festivities of Chattanooga Burger Week what their favorite thing about the week is. The answers are bound to be far and wide. It might be the bordelaise sauce on the burger from Anomaly by OddStory or the fact that The Grove inside the DoubleTree downtown swapped out the usual burger bun for a pair of glazed donuts. Or the house-made pimento cheese slathered on “The Burger with no Name” from Basecamp. Or it could be that they love everything about the defending champions Jack Brown’s crab rangoon burger, including the crunch of the wonton crisp and sweet chili sauce. Or the burger from Alimentari Cucina e Bar, with its Calabrian dill pickle aioli. Then there will be a group of people like myself whose favorite thing about Chattanooga Burger Week is the fact that every participating restaurant’s burger is $7.
That compares to a “little” bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys, which right now would cost you $10.19.
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Last year, a study from Toast, a restaurant point-of-sale service, concluded the average price for a hamburger in a restaurant was $16 (mainly due to the inflation of beef price per pound). In another article published last month, the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune listed the average price of a burger in Philadelphia as $10.17 as opposed to the average burger costing $16.83 in San Francisco.
Even prices at fast food chains, known for having the best bang for your buck, have skyrocketed. My senior year of high school revolved around the McDouble from McDonald’s notorious Dollar Menu, which ended in 2014, sadly. Now, the only thing that softens the blow of the Dollar Menu’s demise is the Biggie Bag from Wendy’s.