Support Local Business FAIL

All I wanted was a hamburger.

I had a craving for a hamburger. Like preggo chicks are with pickles, I was for a bloody burger. It shouldn't have been that hard.

As is my Christmas tradition, I did a little bit of shopping today at 20-year-old mogul Bianca Amor's Liquidation Supercentre. Since I was in the neighbourhood, I did some Princess Auto shopping as well. Now here's where things get interesting. If you Google "best burger edmonton" you are directed to this connect2edmonton forum. They will tell you, with photos, that Grandma D's BBQ Cookhouse has the best burgers in the city. Seeing how I was in the neighbourhood, I thought I'd give it a try.

It's gone.

Shanghai Grill BBQ House is now located at the address in question. So much for that idea. So instead I look to the next suggestion: The Garage Burger Bar, just south of Grant Mac. It's a bit of a drive, but I had the hankering. So I haul ass downtown, pull up in front, and give it a try.

Closed Sundays.

Okay, Metro next door is also said on the page to have good burgers. I don't even have to restart the truck.

Doesn't open 'til 6pm.

Okay, now I'm mad. We're constantly being admonished and implicitly threatened by groups such as Keep Edmonton Original to shop local, whining about how their left-wing capitalist-in-name-but-not-in-spirit members are so great for the community and so much better to support than big name chain places. Graham Hicks blamed himself for going to McDonalds for coffee rather than shopping local just a few days ago. Well I'm here to say good for you, Graham. I remain unconvinced that these businesses really deserve our local support. Here I am trying, on a Sunday afternoon mind you, to enjoy a burger and they are nowhere to be found. Do you want to know where I got my delicious juicy hamburger? Do you?

Wendy's. Wendy's on 104th ave behind Ceili's gave me three delicious hamburgers (okay, one was a chicken but who's counting) at 1:30pm on a Sunday afternoon. You know why? Because they had the novel idea of being open during precisely the time of the week that a person who isn't an unemployed artist or Arts Student would be available and interested in eating a goddamned hamburger.

If local business can't get this, then they deserve to go under. If I happen to read in the next year or two that the owner of Garage Burger Bar goes out of business, declares bankruptcy, and ends up a pauper in the street or (better yet) manning the till at that Wendy's I enjoyed a burger at...I do believe I shall laugh. Out loud. To his face.

Fat Franks on Whyte Avenue is probably the most inexplicable business in this regard. Quick, anybody, try to guess in the comments or something what, come June 2010, their hours will be? C'mon, guess. It's 23C on a Wednesday evening, 9:30pm... will they be open? They weren't in 2009. Tuesday at 5:30pm? Nope, not in 2009. How about midnight, during the bar rush on a Saturday? Oh, guess what, they were closed. Yet the night before they had been open when we left the bar at 2am.

If local business wants to survive, it has to follow the massive rule that the highly successful (and clearly, far superior) chain restaurants have mastered: you are our bitch; get on your knees, present your asses to us, and beg us to fuck you.

As long as they aren't willing to be open Sunday afternoons, my weekend burger cravings are going to be satisfied by a big chain restaurant with a head office in America. The CEO of such a company got my money today. Edmonton's local businesses just didn't seem to want it.