Better Burger in Chelsea closed last week. I sincerely hope the owner sees this, because it didn't go out of business because of "the economy." From the day you opened until about (roughly) two years ago, my boyfriend and I ate at your establishment (seriously) a minimum of four days a week -- frequently more often. (We eat out two to three times a day and are fuddy duddies about food, so it can happen.) Friends often complained that Better Burger was overpriced, but we were loyalists -- loving the always-tasty organic burgers and air fries, which we managed to convince ourselves were somehow healthier. (Ya gotta do that when you have burgers and fries four times a week.) We ate there so often that the entire staff knew us by name -- going through the ups (two babies, and episode of "Boiling Points" filmed inside!) and downs of life (being violently attacked while pregnant with Baby 1) -- we miss you, Mayra!
But then about two years ago, we noticed a HUGE change. It started with an occasional bit of gristle in the meat, then a "stringy" bite. (Was that a ligament?) Ground beef has its shortcomings -- even "pricey" organic ground beef -- so even though this was never an issue in all the previous years we'd been coming, we tried to chalk it off as one of those things. But then it happened again. And again. And again. And then in each individual bite of one burger. It got to the point that we'd go there and end up throwing our entire hamburgers away -- sustaining ourselves on air fries and endless refills of Diet Pepsi while trying to make excuses for you guys. For a while, we'd give it another chance every so often -- and the manager would lament about sales being WAY down -- "The economy is so bad," he'd whisper -- but we knew the truth. Then when BRGR opened, we stopped going altogether. I'm not sure what changes you made to cut costs -- the beef was clearly not coming from the original source -- but any short-term savings you gained were obviously not worth it. We came there because the food was great -- and we stopped coming when it wasn't. The store in Midtown closed a while ago, and now so has Chelsea. If you want to keep the East Side story afloat, I'd strongly recommend you go back to the way you did business five years. We might even stop by!
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