Blimpy Burger reopened Oct. 3 in its new downtown spot next to the Fleetwood. Among the torrents of effusive, grateful, even (one gets the impression) tearful five-star “welcome back” raves on its Facebook page, one stink bomb hung in cyberspace, grousing that Blimpy was turning away eager customers before the 8 p.m. closing time.
As the lunch crowd gathered the following Monday, owner Rich Magner, haggard from stress and lack of sleep, was still obsessing with that Facebook gripe, determined to turn lemonade back into lemons. “Look at that line,” he whispered unhappily. Pointing to a couple who had just crossed his threshold, he predicted: “It’s going to be another forty minutes before they even get to place an order.”
At the old place on Division–purchased and demolished by the university to make way for a new dorm–he went on in his urgent, soft-spoken kvetch, “we’d have lines every day, but because of the way it was arranged, there was entertainment value in the wait.” More customers could see the cooks at work, and there was more to read on the walls. The decor shortage is easily remedied, he allows, but he hasn’t had time yet.
Magner says he was partially successful at pulling off a soft opening the previous week, but once his official opening date rolled around, all hell broke lose. He was prepared for lines from opening to closing, and even printed up an apron that reads: “I’M SORRY. I’M THE LAST PERSON IN LINE” (the person who wears it gets a free meal). But the wait spun out of control, as “crowdsourcing, the social media” built excitement far beyond his loyal customer base. Of course, he reminds himself, an Indiegogo campaign helped finance Blimpy’s rebirth in the first place.
Blimpy has the rep of being the anti-Zingerman’s. Though the beef is freshly ground, that’s all you’ll hear about pedigreed ingredients, and ordering your burger from a harried line of cooks is not unlike bidding a hand of duplicate bridge: only a finite number of essential words are allowed in the exchange, and God help you if you don’t say them at the right time. (While the opposite of Zingerman’s customer hand-holding, it’s an equally efficient technique for matching customer to burger.) Blimpy’s motto is “cheaper than food,” but Magner was fretting that he’d had to raise prices: a guy who ordered a lot of trimmings on his four-patty “quad,” plus onion rings, managed to top $10.
Magner cheered up a bit describing the opening ceremony, where he and his co-owner, wife Chris Magner (they met in the early Seventies working at what was then called Krazy Jim’s), and three of their four grown kids were on hand as bagpiper Herm Steinman “piped us in.” He also smiles talking about some happy times over the summer with one of his sons, refinishing the vintage soda fountain chairs. Then he resumed his self-criticism session: “There’s more seats, but we can’t get people through fast enough to fill them. It’s because every burger is made to order,” he says, frowning as if that’s something to apologize for.
Another change, which may be slowing things down further: Blimpy now takes credit cards.
Blimpy Burger, 304 S. Ashley, 663-4590. Hours at press time: Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Closed Sun. blimpyburger.com
