Both the Savage Pacer and the Star Tribune have covered Burnsville High School’s marketing club’s recent resurrection and their joining forces with one of the South Metro’s worst restaurants, Burger Jones. Working to benefit their club but mostly Burger Jones itself because its own in-house staff members prefer astroturfing and then lying about it and obviously can’t turn around the restaurant there in Burnsville without having a group of HS students work for them for $15/day.
From the Star Tribune article:
“Burger Jones is such a playful brand. We love the snarkiness of the brand. We love the idea that high school students love to be a little bad, and this is a pretty harmless way to do it,” said Kip Clayton, vice president of marketing for Burger Jones’ parent company, Parasole Restaurant Holdings.
[...]
Like many of Burger Jones’ offerings, the Blaze Burger isn’t for the meek eater. It’s a 7-ounce patty of fresh ground beef topped with a fried egg, bacon, hot sauce, fresh jalapeños, pepper jack cheese and peanut butter.
Well, if high school students need to learn how to be bad in the marketplace, Burger Jones is definitely the place to do it. With a 61/100 ratings on Urbanspoon and 3/5 on that site I refuse to mention, along with countless other reviews of people finding it to be overpriced and miserable, Burger Jones has definitely cornered the market on “bad”.
The burger itself sounds fine, however, the Star Tribune article makes it sound like this sort of thing hasn’t been done anywhere ever before. Listen, peanut butter on a burger isn’t exciting anymore and jalapenos, pepper jack and hot sauce has become as typical as mushrooms and swiss or BBQ sauce, cheddar, and bacon. While the burger definitely fits the school’s mascot, I really think they could have gotten a lot more mileage out of something which was actually inventive or different to eat.
The promotion was working according to the Savage Pacer article with nearly 40 burgers being sold within two days of the begin of the promotion. That’s nearly $40 for Burnsville but almost $400 for Burger Jones. With the students working a year-long campaign for the restaurant, one which has its own marketing department and subversive tactics to keep it going, the school should have found another local restaurant which actually needed help getting the world out instead of the creeps at Burger Jones. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great the club found an inventive way to make some money, I just think there are better role models out there and/or restaurants which could actually benefit from the club’s work than Parasole’s Burger Jones.
What do you think about this one? Do you think BHS should have found a different business to work with for this promotion? Perhaps a restaurant that actually needed help? Does the burger sound appetizing to you? Do you think it’s something special and worthy of attention? Did you ever participate in any school-sponsored programs like this when you were a kid? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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October 17th, 2012 at 9:08 am
If Burnsville High School is going to allow kids to skip school to hang out at astroturfing restaurants, I don’t know why they don’t go to the master of the craft, Dominick’s in Eagan. They are way better at astroturfing than Parasole.
Dominick’s could teach them to:
1) Go home and use their parent’s computers to post fake reviews about how great the food was at a great value.
2) Learn about the professional background of the head chef and post it from their iPads like the background of the head chef is common knowledge when you order a beefsteak sandwich
3) When confronted after one of them inadvertently posts a comment from the computer in the office of the restaurant, casually throw some kid in front of the bus and wash their hands of the issue.
I am always so impressed when a “little guy’ like Dominick’s in Eagan, which is little more than a closet in a gas station totally can outclass a multimillion dollar enterprise like Parasole when it comes to propagating fake reviews on the internet to entice idiots to eat there.
I hope the Burnsville Marketing Team gets a chance to read this and then they go learn from the best.
October 17th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
I’m having a hard time not posting some tongue-in-cheek astroturf comments.
October 17th, 2012 at 5:18 pm
A while ago, I posted a review on here as well as on other places blasting Burger Jones in Burnsville and sharing a story of food poisoning I got from eating there. I was accused (here) of being a bitter ex employee (which I am not, I just know what is good and what sucks – Burger Jones and getting food poisoning from Burger Jones sucks).
I feel slightly redeemed now to see that it is finally well known that Burger Jones uses astroturfing (in other words, employees writing complete bullshit about just how swell the swill they serve at Burger Jones is).
The faculty member who facilitated these high school students working with a company as poor and shady as Burger Jones sadly seems to be an idiot for not knowing what kind of company he was hooking these children on to.
There are some acutally good, privately held and local restaurants that could have taught the kids good skills based on reality and who could have also actually benefeited from the contribution of bright high school students.
Instead of all that happening, the kids learned bad habit and I am left simply with one more reason to dislike Burger Jones and to question the judgement of the faculty of Burnsville High School.