A double at 7th Street Burger. | Photo courtesy of 7th Street Burger.
It’s probably not a good idea to finance the opening of a new restaurant on a credit card. But it worked for Kevin Rezvani, the co-founder of 7th Street Burger in New York City.
It helped that 7th Street’s first location was tiny (about 280 square feet) and the rent was cheap (about $4,500 per month). All in, it was about $70,000, he said.
And, happily, that first unit of 7th Street (named for the street where it made its debut) was a hit.
Within months of opening in May 2021, the tiny outlet was churning out thousands of burgers a day. Rezvani had to disconnect the phone and online orders to handle the volume.
Location No. 2 came 10 months later. The next year, eight more restaurants opened across New York City.
Fast forward to today: The burger chain is preparing to open its 26th restaurant (it will be the chain’s second in Washington, D.C.). Units are coming to Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Rezvani expects to hit 30 open by the end of 2025, and to reach 60 by the end of next year, and 100 by 2027. (When interviewed for this column, Rezvani was exploring potential locations in Los Angeles.)
For now, all are company-owned.
Last year, Rezvani and partner Paras Jain took on private-equity funding from Left Lane Capital (also behind Blank Street Coffee and a number of restaurant tech companies), which has helped build 7th Street’s infrastructure to support that growth.
What makes 7th Street work is its very simple menu of smashburgers with cheese and fries, which can also be loaded. There are no chicken sandwiches. No shakes. Just the basics: a thinly smashed beef patty (a single or double) griddled with onions, with or without cheese, and topped with pickles (and/or jalapenos) and house sauce on a buttered potato bun.
Others have called 7th Street an East Coast version of In-N-Out Burger because of its simple menu and low pricing, but Rezvani disagrees.
“I like to say we’re the Dunkin’ Donuts of burgers in New York, because it’s easily affordable, grab-and-go. It’s just very accessible.”
The burgers are priced at $6.50 for a single, and $4.50 for fries. Originally, Rezvani wanted the burger and fries to be an even $10, so customers could just hand over one bill, no change required, for an easy and quick transaction.
But the rising cost of beef forced a menu price increase. Now the chain’s growing scale will help keep pricing low, Rezvani said.
As the chain grows, units have gotten a bit bigger, with a sweet spot around 1,500- to 1,800-square feet with some indoor seating.
Rezvani is finding that it’s a bit more difficult to get restaurants open outside the Northeast. In New York, opening has been “a very light lift,” he said. “I’ve opened stores as fast as in three weeks in New York City.”
But Rezvani has learned the lesson about the importance of that old cliché (location, location, location). And he learned it the hard way.
In 2014, years before opening 7th Street on his credit card, he launched another burger concept in New Jersey called Diesel & Duke. That concept grew to five units before it failed during the COVID shutdown.
“It didn’t do so well,” said Rezvani. “We didn’t do the numbers we wanted.”
The problem: Locations. That’s why Rezvani decided to do things differently with 7th Street.
“In my head, it was that we get a prime location. We didn’t need a big space. If we could do 100 customers a day, we’ll break even. If we did 200 a day, we’d do pretty well,” he said. “And if you can’t do 200 customers a day in a 10 million-person market, then you shouldn’t be in business.”
Now, Rezvani and Jain are building a second brand as a separate company.
Last year, the two partnered with Joey Scalabrino, who founded Apollo Bagels, also in New York City. The sixth location is expected to open this week, with four more in the works, Rezvani said.
That’s another brand with a simple menu and affordable pricing. Now that 7th Street has the infrastructure in place to multiply, Rezvani said he’s spending more time with the smaller Apollo.
Those early years of growth for a brand, that’s his area of expertise, he said.
“If you told me to open a brand in New York and go from one to 10 to 15 locations, my partner and I can do that. It’s so easy for us,” he said. “But taking a business from 15 to 100, that I just don’t know how to do.”
