Has anyone else noticed the demise of the humble, yet iconic, hamburger from restaurant menus in this great land? I was at a restaurant today and ordered a hamburger, and received a cheeseburger. Seems like every hamburger comes with cheese as the default now, which, to my mind, makes it not a hamburger anymore. Want a QuarterPounder at McDonald’s? You’re out of luck, unless you order a Quarter Pounder with Cheese without the cheese. Take a look at the page labeled “Hamburgers” at Wendy’s and tell me if you notice some dairy product that they all have in common.
I have no religious objection to cheeseburgers. I’m not lactose intolerant. I just prefer my burgers without cheese. As hardships go, ordering a cheeseburger without the cheese is pretty far down the list, but it does make me feel like I’m in a Jack Nicholson movie. Is there some reason I have to jump through hoops just to get a hamburger?
I beg the Dope’s indulgence in calling McDonald’s and Wendy’s “restaurants”; they were just convenient online cites for a much larger, and more pernicious phenomenon. I can assure you I have noticed this at more upscale establishments, too; the kind with napkins and silverware that you don’t throw away.
your a victim of popularity …… cheeseburgers are more popular than hamburgers …only reason you still see hamburgers on a menu is so they can inform you that they charge you a buck extra for the cheese
I was thinking quite the opposite. By only having a cheeseburger on the menu they get to charge me the cheeseburger price and not have to provide me with any cheese.
I think knocking the non-cheese versions off the menu (not taking them out of existence, just leaving them unprinted) makes room for advertising the more-expensive items more prominently. As you said, asking for no cheese is not the end of the world - but to them, not having menu-board space for the latest & greatest would be nearing the end of it.
I checked In-N-Out’s website while I was composing the OP and discovered that their hamburgers were certainly uncontaminated by cheese. I applaud their resolve to retain the hamburger on both culinary and lexicographic grounds, but there are no In-N-Outs near me where I can luxuriate in traditional humburgeriffic purity.
Even with that exception noted, the corruption of “hamburger” is an unmistakable trend. I should have been consulted.
I think you’ve got it. You can sell hamburgers for a dollar and offer people the option of getting it with cheese for twenty cents more. Or you can sell cheeseburgers for a dollar twenty and offer people the option of getting it without cheese.
I worked at McDonalds in the 80’s. I can’t say it was on the menu, but quarter pounders were called QUATERCHEESE/QUARTERHAM to specify with and without cheese.
I’ve ordered that way a few times over the years, the employees never blink, the person I order for asks about the term.
(I eat cheeseburgers, so if I order hamburgers it’s for someone else in my car)
My local sports bar offers a hamburger. It comes with lettuce, red onion, dill pickles, and tomatoes. If you want cheese on it, that costs $1 extra.
Another place I like, has hamburgers, with pretty much the same toppings included. If you want cheese, it costs extra.
At Harvey’s (a Canadian fast-food burger chain), the default is “no cheese.” You have to specify cheese, if you want it. Not sure how much it costs extra, but it does cost extra.
I’m not sure I’m seeing where “cheeseburger” is the default.
In the USA, where we have a massive oversupply of cheap dairy products, compared to Canada, with its’ production limits. See the recent kerfuffle about dairy product tariffs.
I’m pretty sure the QP and the QPwithC used to be distinct menu items, but now there’s just the latter.
Maybe there’s no more Machiavellian explanation than that they only have a certain amount of space on their menu boards. As the number of offerings has increased, they had to streamline the flow of information to the consumer. I’m sure that even in the current cheeseburger-friendly climate that any decent McDonald’s could figure out how to make a Quarter Pounder sans fromage. But I do think it’s interesting that if they had to get rid of one menu item, it’s the one that used to be the standard.
It’s not happening everywhere, yet, but I do think it’s happening.
You’ll also find it difficult to find a new car without A/C or power windows. They, like cheese, used to be considered extra but since there average buyer wants those extras, they got incorporated into the default option.
If you want to have a long tail offer, which would include many of the seldom-chosen options, you have to provide your customer with a search function to sift through your offer or you risk overwhelming them. I remember a porn actress saying that when she’s at a kiosk selling her DVDs, she gets makes more sales if she keeps the list of options short like 5-6. That falls within the working memory limit for most people.
Also, I thought “hamburger” was a broad category which included cheeseburgers. If someone told me they ate a hamburger, the only thing I would presume, by default, they ate was a bread bun and ground beef. What do else do you think must be & can only be there to make a hamburger?
