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Comment by greenyouse | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it interesting how people self-organize by what they identify with?

It kind of seems like the food at McDonald's et. al is good enough or has cultural status that makes it hard to compete with. Locol has better tasting food at comparable prices, good decor, and locals working the store but people are still hesitant to make it their go-to burger joint.

From the article, maybe people see a fancy looking store and assume that it's not a place for them?

Any ideas what they could offer to connect better with their communities?

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I'm reminded of an article [0] posted on HN last year about "McDonald’s [being] de-facto community centers". Perhaps difference is that Locol has a 'mission' and is thus seen as a sort of charity, whereas McDonald's is very clearly a capitalist enterprise.

Overall, it seems the proprietors were very out of touch with the community. I have to wonder if they would have been much more successful if, instead of coming up with a hipster sounding name and hiring an architect to design a restaurant that would be "welcoming" to the locals, they had opened it as 'Ez Burgerz' in whatever dilapidated retail space they could find.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11886795

Yeah, when I look at their design it says "White hipster" to me. I can see why AA looking in the door would think it's not their kinda place. Still cool that they are trying.

Not to mention the menu. I'm a (lower) middle-class white dude and when I hear that their burger is a "combination of ground beef, tofu, barley, quinoa, and seaweed" I definitely think it's not my kind of restaurant. I can only imagine how a poor, intercity, working class person would feel about it.

I just looked at their menu and their burgers are around $4-6. Mcdonalds has $1 burgers. I don't think that's really comparable. I can get a meal for 6 for the price of a meal for 2 at Locol.

On that note, Locol looks awesome and I'll be eating their since it's in my area :D.

It's not an entirely fair comparison -- the Locol burgers are a bit bigger than McDonalds (maybe something like 3 McDonalds = 2 Locol)

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