When Fast Food Was Cool
Serial Eater
At venerable Beef Burger, the last of its breed, doing unto others means one tasty and inexpensive meal — and being treated like family. No wonder ‘God loves Beef Burger’
By David C. Bailey
Photographs By sam Froelich
P
osted by the door of the Beef (aka Biff) Burger on West Lee Street is a boldly printed, black-and-white sign: “We’re in a poor neighborhood, with a rich outlook. And we have a darn good burger.” Lest you think Biff corporate paid some Madison Avenue ad agency to develop that slogan, owner Ralph Havis is quick to point out, “I came up with that. I’m for the poor people, the working man. It really goes back to years ago when people were struggling through here.” They still are — which is why this 51-year-old icon to tasty burgers served swiftly with a smile is just as crowded today as it ever was. “When the harder times hit out there, the better it gets for us,” Havis says. The prices, to be sure, are great — 99 cents a burger. The service is first-name friendly. The 1950s architecture is retro cool. But it’s the burger that keeps people coming back. Round and round the patented Roto-Red-Broiler goes, cooking 18 hamburgers a minute on a sort of meat merry-go-round. Sizzling beneath the 700-degree glow of quartz crystals, the beef sheds fat and juices, which hit a second, ceramic heating element, producing the distinctive char-broiled flavor. Seeded buns beneath the burgers soak up any juices that haven’t vaporized. Then it’s time for the burgers to take a quick dip in the “secret” sauce, which was given to Havis by Earl P. Brame, one of the chain’s founders and the inventor of the patented roto broiler. Sweet, sour, meaty, toasty, warm and smoky combine into a three- or fourbite nosh that begs you to have another and another. A UNCG dorm once ordered a thousand. Back in 1961 Pete Dunford came down from Virginia to open the restaurant and, eight months later, hired Havis, 18, fresh out of high school. It’s hard to imagine a time when fast-food outlets were cutting-edge, even glamorous, but for a farm boy from Winter Haven, Florida, the eye-catching angles of Biff (Best in Fast Food) Burger’s modern architecture, the sparkle of the spanking-clean, stainless-steel equipment and the assembly-line efficiency of the kitchen were nothing short of awe-inspiring. “I felt like I was in Hollywood, I guess,” he recalls. “And people up here were nice and friendly and would talk to you.” And The Art & Soul of Greensboro
the $1-an-hour he was paid seemed pretty good to Havis at the time (the equivalent of ten Biff Burgers if they were on sale for a nickel off). But what really changed the course of Havis’ life was Dunford’s taking the teenager under his wing and mentoring him. Within a month, Dunford had made him manager. One by one, Dunford passed on the tricks of the trade to his new manager, showing him how to deal with suppliers and employees. Above all else, he urged Havis to run the restaurant doing unto others as you would have them do unto you — treating employees fairly and serving customers as if they were your guests. “He was a good, Christian man,” Havis recalls. But the best part about his new job at Biff Burger was meeting Alma: “I was 19, and she was coming through the line and she was about the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. It just blinded me. I couldn’t even see nobody else,” he recalls. “I called her up and I told her I was that tall, ugly boy at Biff Burger. I kept on aggravating her and aggravating her until she finally said, ‘Well, you’ve got to come by and meet my mother and father.’” Momma and Daddy approved and in August, Ralph and Alma celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Unlike Burger King or Hardee’s, “We’ve always tried to be like a family restaurant,” Havis says. It helped that Beef Burger got out from under the Biff Burger October 2012
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