Crazy & Co.

Burger Joints Of The World, Heart Attack Grill

15 May 2023

This entry in our world’s burger joints is a little different. Rather than a chain this is a single location in Tempe, Arizona.

Founded in 2005 by Jon Basso with the intent of serving “nutritional pornography”. The Heart Attack Grill has one major selling point. It sells the world’s unhealthiest burgers. Ranging from a single upto a octuple heart bypass burger containing a massive 16,000 calories.

If you manage to finish this, you are wheeled out to your car by your personal naughty nurse.

Your side order of fries are cooked in lard, tequila and beer to make sure they contain as many calories as possible. Your soft drinks are made with can sugar, and patrons can buy unfiltered cigarettes.

Big Guests Eat Free

If you happen to weigh over 25 stone, then you eat free. You do have to weigh yourself beforehand, and drinks are excluded from the deal, oh and you can’t share your food.

Theming

The whole joint is themed around nurses/doctors. Guests don hospital gowns before eating. The nurses take prescriptions (orders) from the patients (guests).

If you don’t manage to finish your food, then one of the naughty nurses will paddle you. With the option to buy the paddle afterwards.

So, not only is this a hamburger place that uses the time tested tactic of sexy ladies. It also aims to feed you the most unhealthy burgers possible.

What could possibly go wrong?

2011 the Heart Attack Grills spokesman Blair River died at the age of 29 from complications with pneumonia. Not sure if the 41 stone he weighed had any bearing on that.

2012 a customer suffered a heart attack whilst eating one of their burgers. The owner called an ambulance, whilst the other patrons took photos.

2012 A female customer fell unconscious whilst eating a double bypass burger. Though she was also drinking and smoking.

2013 another spokesman John Alleman (bit of a dangerous job that) dropped dead outside the restaurant whilst waiting for a bus. Not sure how heavy that one was.

Resources;

Company Website

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Equipment, Event Planning, Fun Story, General

New Equipment, Fuel Bunker

13 May 2023

When worked the funfair circuit we needed a generator for powering our equipment. Well, we used four of them in fact. When we moved totally into corporate entertainment we made it a condition of the contract that the client provided power.

This work well for a number of years, as usually we were powering perhaps a candy floss and a popcorn machine, so at most a couple of 13 amp sockets were fine.

During covid we suddenly found our clients asking us to provide larger catering services, such as serving four thousand burgers for Amazon in four hours, though that is another tale lol.

Generators

We suddenly found ourselves needing sixty and seventy amp supplies. So to translate this into a format that made sense to the client we would specify that we needed like four 13 amp supplies. What would happen is that we would arrive at the venue, be handed a four way socket and told here are your four supplies. Trouble is, the four sockets joined into a single 13amp plug. And ‘Oh’ they would say, ‘your sharing with the DJ, pizza truck and rodeo bull!’

Great, we were gonna be pulling 100 amp from a single 13amp plug. So no power problems expected then.

To circumvent this, we ended up adding some generators to our line up.

This gave us the flexibility to power ourselves and some spare capacity to boot.

Initially we would fill them up from a local garage that sold red diesel. But even though it was only about 4 miles away, it was still a hassle to couple up and run down there for fuel. Additionally at the time it was about £1.40 a litre from them. The local diesel supplier quoted £0.82 a litre, which was a massive saving, but would only deliver a 1000 litres a time.

So we added a fuel bunker to take advantage of this. Other people we know had similar but owning for lift trucks, would simply lift them in the air to allow gravity to dispense the fuel. Not owning a fork lift, we added a battery powered system and a metered pump.

We installed the system in the yard and had it filled. Then had a think about security. Some people feel entitled to help themselves to whatever without legal niceties such as ownership being considered relevant.

So we set about fortifying our diesel. A wifi camera provided not only monitoring of the set up, but would automatically light up the area, sound an alarm and alert me at my phone that someone was at the bunker. We also added locks to the on/off valve, filling hole. and pump switch.

My daughter pointed out that the battery just being sat there was screaming take me take me. So we fitted a secured steel lock box with the battery inside. A jokey conversation with a friend who looked at the system ended with him saying I am surprised you haven’t electrified it.

Ha, cant do that someone might touch it accidentally. Ha, they might, ha ha that could be fun. Yeah lets do it.

The end result is that the system is now fitted with a similar energiser to what farmers use to keep cows in their field. To be fair, it is remotely controlled, and not left live all the time. But I can turn it on from anywhere in the world using my phone. We also added a solar charger to keep the whole shebang topped up.

So our fuel bunker is ready for all comers.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

Burger Joints Of The World, Quicks Burgers

29 April 2023

This time we leave the good ole US of A, and take a look at a chain of burger joints hailing from Belgium. I must admit a soft spot for these as on honeymoon, when we didn’t have a lot of disposable income, we frequented Quicks burgers as the most affordable eatery whilst we were in France and Belgium.

It is also nice seeing a different take in the actors and models used for the advertisements. Whereas the Americans have everyone looking like they have just stepped off a catwalk. Quicks use people that look more like, well people. Check out the welcome video on the homepage, love the part where one guy whips his wig off to reveal he is bald, whilst the other one is eating with his mouth open and full of lettuce.

The chain began life in 1971 when Baron Vaxelaire opened two restaurants in Antwerp and Waterloo. 30 years later it had grown to over 400 stores in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and a number of French overseas territories.

To be honest, the chain doesn’t really do anything outstanding or unique, but it just makes a nice counterpoint to the overload of American chains. Having tasted them I can attest to the fact that their burgers do taste a helluva lot better than your typical McDonalds fare.

Mega Giant

All in all, a nice, profitable if rather bland entry into our series of burger joints.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning

New Equipment, Generator System

18 April 2023

In the past when we specialised in ‘Fun Food’ such as candy floss, doughnuts etc. We usually had it in our contract that the client was to provide power. This worked great for single items.

However as we moved into bigger catering jobs such as gourmet burgers, the discussion would go like this.

“We need four individual 13 amp power supplies”,

Client “No problem”

On arrival we would be handed a 6 way multiplug, which connected to a single 13 amp socket, and then told that the other two connections were for the pizza van and DJ. So all in all they were trying to run some 60 amps from a 13 amp connection.

The predictable result was that we spent most of the night trying to find some way to actual power our kit up.

The Move To L.P.G.

Or to give it its full title, liquid petroleum gas. We bought in a considerable amount of kit that could be powered from portable gas bottles. An added benefit was that many of them actually cooked faster than their electrical equivalents.

The downside was that many health and safety officers don’t like gas. So many venues we were banned from using it and back to the original problem.

We already had a small 30 amp generator that we used occasionally, but for some of the larger events, this was nowhere near enough.

The Answer, More Power

It was decided that we needed to move up a class in generator systems. We looked at some new builds from a company in Peterborough. We worked out that we needed probably a 30kva set. So we decided to go for a 63kva.

The thinking behind this was that buying what we need did not give us any room for future growth. So 63 gave us some breathing space. Additionally the larger set was only some £800 more expensive, was no bigger physically, and used the same engine so should have similar running costs.

Making It Portable

We acquired a set of axles for it, and asked our friends at Fairtech Fabrications to put a trailer system together for us so that it was road transportable.

Being Mounted

They fabricated a simple two axle trailer and mounted the unit for us, giving us flexibility to power anything we are going to run in the next couple of years at least. We could probably do with a mid sized generator system, something in the 25kva range perhaps, but that is for a future project.

Finishing Touches

Once we had it mounted, we adding some basic branding with our new Crazy & Co. logo, and storage facilities for cable adaptors etc, along with a detachable fire extinguisher, just in case.

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Catering, Equipment, Event Planning, Food Trucks, Fun Story

Burger Joints Of The World, In-N-Out Burgers

5 April 2023

Gourmet burgers are one of our main lines nowadays. Despite the campaigns for healthier heating, veganism etc, burgers are still massively popular.

Like most people I have made many a visit to the famous American chains over here, namely McDonalds and Burger King. In fact I am old enough to remember when Wimpy was a massive chain, and truth be told, what I remember of them, their burger was better than either of the USA behemoths.

However there are many other chains or ‘burger joints’ in the US of A. Non at the size of the main two, but some pretty big and expanding. Some of the smaller ones are nowhere near in size, but have massive public followings. We are gonna look at a few of these, their history and menu’s.

Our first contender is the quaintly named In-N-Out Burgers. First launched in the Los Angeles suburb of Baldwin Park California by Harry and Esther Snyder in 1948. The original store was tiny, only some 10ft square. Harry would visit the local wholesalers each morning to pick out the freshest ingredients whilst his wife Esther would take care of the administration and bookkeeping.

The beef patties were made by hand fresh every morning, and quality was a watchword for them from the off.

Drive Through

Harry would work in his garage on a night, after long days of cooking burgers. Later in 1948 he put together a two way voice box allowing his customers to order food without even leaving their cars. This focus on drive through was a mainstay of the companies business model. In fact it wasn’t until restaurant No.21 in 1979 that they even had a sit down section to allow guests to consume their food on the premises.

By 1963 they had grown to the extant that they opened their own processing plant for the burgers, up till then Esther had prepared each patty using a hand press.

By the time Harry Snyder died in 1976, at the age of 63, the chain had grown to 18 restaurants.

Second Generation

Harry’s son 24-year-old Rich Snyder took the reins after his fathers death and expanded the chain rapidly, building the chain to 90 stores over the next 20 years.

Sadly in 1993 whilst returning from opening store No. 93 in Fresno, California, Rich died along with four other passengers when the light aircraft he was in crashed due to being caught in the wake turbulence of a larger aircraft that landed in front of them.

His brother Guy took over and aggressively expanded the company to over 140 locations in six years before dying from an overdose of painkillers.

Esther Snyder died in 2006 at the age of 86 whereupon the presidency passed to Mark Taylor, former VP of operations.

Animal Burgers

They launched their ‘Animal’ burger in 1961, where the beef pattie was fried in a thin layer of mustard, add extra pickles and grilled onions were added.

Protein Burger

Their protein burger, dispenses with the bun and wraps the whole lot in lettuce, for a healthier option.

Flying Dutchman

A real unusual one this, think of taking the burger out of the bun and , well and nothing. That’s what you get, two patties, two slices of cheese (well that yellow stuff the Americans claim is cheese), pickles salad and wrap it in a slice of paper. In N Out have many items on their secret menu. Not on display in the restaurants, but viewable on the website.

In n Out Burgers Crossed Palm Trees

The company tend to have a pair of crossed palm trees at the front of each location. This is allegedly in allusion to Harry Snyder’s favourite movie, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Bible Quotes

In keeping with his Christian beliefs, many In n Out Burgers items such as the drinks cups have bible references printed on them.

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