Smashburger’s “Summer of Smash” menu provides both value and premium items and was a hit this summer. | Photo courtesy of Smashburger.
The Philippines-based Jollibee Food Corp. bought Smashburger in 2018 as part of an effort to break into the U.S. market.
It hasn’t quite gone as well as planned. In the years since then, Smashburger has run into various challenges, including intense competition, a pandemic and then a consumer shift away from burgers. It hasn’t helped that the company has had a revolving door in the C-suite.
Nor has its reliance on third-party delivery. “We focused on third-party aggregators to the point that it got to be over 60% of our revenue channel,” said Jim Sullivan, who was named CEO of the chain last month and who has served as the concept president since February.
The company has since brought that back down to about 30%. And it is now intent on bringing customers back into the restaurants.
“We are focused on getting the dining room back,” said Tom Ryan, the cofounder of Smashburger who is now an advisor with Jollibee. “Obviously aggregators fulfill a consumer-based need out there. But if you want people to experience the most pristine version of the brand, there’s no better place to have that experience than inside the four walls where the product goes from point to point.”
To be sure, this is the latest in a series of revitalizations or “brand transformations” for the brand, which has struggled to find the right note in recent years.
Smashburger was founded in 2007 by Ryan and Rick Schaden, both of whom had been key figures at the sandwich chain Quiznos. Ryan is a former McDonald’s executive who had helped create a number of products that remain big sellers for that chain, including the McGriddle line of breakfast sandwiches.
Smashburger was part of an early generation of fast-casual, so-called “better burger” chains. It is based on the concept of the smashburger, in which balls of ground beef are “smashed” thin on a griddle, which gives them a crust. The chain for a time was a thriving part of the fast-casual revolution and operated nearly 300 locations by 2014.
By 2017, the chain operated 332 locations and generated $333 million in system sales, but it had started to struggle with weak sales. Jollibee acquired the chain the next year, hoping to bolster its growth, but that hasn’t quite materialized.
At the end of last year, Smashburger operated 194 locations, most of them company operated.
The chain has gone through a series of executive changes and menu overhauls. Sullivan is the fourth executive to lead Smashburger since 2023, when Carl Bachmann left the chain to go run BurgerFi, which would later declare bankruptcy.
The ownership change, the pandemic and all those management changes all brought with them a lot of change for change’s sake.
Sullivan himself was brought in last year as chief development officer as part of a management shakeup before he was later promoted to president and then CEO following the quiet departure of Denise Nelson.
The pandemic led a lot of companies to rely more on third-party aggregators than executives pleased, but 60% was extreme. “When you think about the aggregator business, it’s not necessarily your core customer,” Sullivan said. “It’s people that are shopping the aggregator and looking for the best deal.”
Smashburger has now changed the way it markets the brand to bring in incremental traffic. It is also focused on “everyday value.”
Executives said they have generated sales and traffic with a “Summer of Smash” menu that features a “$4.99 All-The-Time Menu” including its All-American Burger, Deluxe Burger and its “Americana Big Dog,” all for $4.99 apiece. The big dog is part of a lineup of upgraded hot dogs, including one topped with bacon and cheese and another with chili and cheese.
That marks a return of hot dogs to the menu, which had been one of the casualties of the chain’s changes over the years.
It’s also working on the premium end of the burger spectrum. Smashburger brought back its Brisket Burger, a massive sandwich that features two patties, smoked brisket, bacon, cheddar cheese, barbecue sauce and pickles. It’s so big the sandwich needs a special, Parker House roll bun to hold everything. Oh, and it has 1,380 calories.
“I know the whole Summer of Smash agenda sounds aggressive, but honestly we just filled in space that we used to own anyway,” Ryan said. “We had hot dogs on our menu. We brought them back in a much-improved format. We used to sell chili, and we stopped that sometime around 2018. At the end of the day, this wasn’t a newfound skill.”
Smashburger has changed its logo multiple times. The newest one is on the right. | Images courtesy of Smashburger.
Smashburger is also doing some more basic things like, say, making sure the logos at each of its locations are the same.
Smashburger has changed its logo multiple times in recent years, from a more basic “Smashburger” in red, to a “Smash burger” in brown partially crushed by a burger press, to a reddish-orange “Smashburger” next to what appears to be a burger patty topped with an S shaped like a burger press.
“I think the biggest thing that we’ll need to do to drive traffic in the restaurant is get uniformity with our brand and our logo and eventually update the assets,” Sullivan said. “Right now we’re focused on driving traffic and revenue.”
He also decried a lot of changes the company has made in recent years. So Ryan and the Smashburger management team have been working together over the past year and a half to get things back.
“There were a lot of things that were done, a lot of changes made that were not the right changes for the brand,” Sullivan said. “That was first identified by Tom in late 2023 into ’24. We went to work on that throughout all of ’24.
“I would say we are now back to the gold standard on all our ingredients and all our products.”
