Why I was a fan but never want to eat at Burgermeister again: Enough is enough

I honestly don't want to know how much money I've spent at the Berlin burger chain Burgermeister. I gorged myself on the food every week. My record was five visits in one week. I owe the burgers my bad skin, my weight gain, and an absurdly large hole in my wallet for fast food. Burgermeister was a middle ground between the giant McDonald's and those unbearable hipster joints where you pay what feels like 20 euros for a beetroot burger between two pretzel buns.

Burgermeister's prices have always been fair: The most expensive burger there, a double cheeseburger with jalapeños called "Meister aller Klassen," never cost double figures, and a generous portion of fries cost just over three euros. But Burgermeister has been expanding nationwide for some time now. Branches have now opened in Frankfurt and Hanover , with plans to open in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf . The chain, once charmingly founded in the former restroom at Schlesisches Tor , actually even wants to expand to America— think big ! This megalomania makes them unsympathetic, in my opinion. But I couldn't bring myself to turn my back on my burger addiction for moral reasons; I only went to my regular branch anyway.

But now there's been a price increase. The beloved "master of all classes" now costs a whopping €9.29 instead of €8.80. It wasn't the price increase itself, but that stupid €0.29 that was the deciding factor. It's a McDonald's number, a number that testifies to careful calculations, a consultation with the marketing team, and in my opinion, can't be considered a hasty decision by a local, friendly chain.

Resigned and angry, I paid the price, and then the next shocker: I didn't get a cent back. That was it for me. Of course, it's not about the cent – ​​I could have been stingy and asked for it – but about the sheer audacity of advertising the price but charging differently. The already ridiculous price doesn't even degenerate into the cheapest of all marketing tricks, screaming: "Look how cheap I am, you'll get something back!" But the Burgermeister, which has degenerated into a franchise, can't keep the smallest of all promises. Grumpily, I accepted the €9.30 burger. Unfortunately, it tasted good.