Why food inflation hasn’t hit “Bob’s Burgers”

Submit-pandemic inflation has triggered meals prices to soar. The USDA predicts we might see a slight deceleration this yr, however grocery and restaurant meals costs are nonetheless on monitor to extend by 1.6% and 4.3%, respectively.

Nevertheless, there’s one restaurant that’s by some means averted the crunch of inflation: Bob’s Burgers. 

Since premiering in 2011, Fox’s Emmy-winning animated sequence has grow to be a contemporary traditional, depicting the comedic struggles of the Belcher household as they navigate day by day hijinks and maintaining their restaurant afloat. 

Like patriarch Bob Belcher, there are literally thousands of restaurant homeowners who’re dealing with a difficult trade. The pandemic decimated native eating places, and with labor shortages and excessive meals costs, the highway to restoration has been laborious.

Whereas eating places have elevate costs to offset inflation prices, I’ve observed that throughout all 14 seasons, the costs at Bob’s Burgers have remained the identical. Granted, we’re speaking a couple of cartoon the place the children have been in the identical grade since season one. However Bob’s Burgers is basically a office comedy with a really working class household that, by and enormous, take care of many points that restaurant homeowners can relate to.

So why not inflation?

Inflation pushed the typical value of a beef burger in 2023 to nearly $16. An everyday burger at Bob’s Burger is available in at simply $5. And the “Burger of the Day,” which is usually loaded with specialty, pricier substances (saffron, black garlic, kale, and many others.), normally prices simply 95 cents extra.

In accordance with Loren Bouchard, creator and government producer of Bob’s Burgers, inflation merely doesn’t exist in Bob’s world as a result of, finally, being too topical would grow to be too distracting. “We’ve had this with expertise [too],” he says. “Cell telephones appeared fairly totally different after we began. Extra individuals had flip telephones and it began to really feel distracting at a sure level.”

Granted, Bob’s restaurant may very well be profitable even with $5 burgers, particularly when you think about that his meals is usually lauded as distinctive from on a regular basis prospects to indicate’s famed restaurateur Skip Marooch (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani). However the Belcher household repeatedly stays getting ready to chapter.

“I all the time attempt to remind [the show’s writers] that the restaurant wouldn’t survive if they honestly solely had the purchasers that we see. What I all the time say is think about that they did get a lunch rush however we didn’t see it,” Bouchard says. “You possibly can’t do the maths on Bob’s should you simply rely the variety of individuals we see. Nevertheless it’s onerous to animate a crowd. And, in fact, it’s enjoyable to make enjoyable of a struggling restaurant.”

Finally, Bob’s Burgers is a narrative about an underdog doing the most effective he can with what little he has. A part of the leisure is watching Bob scrape by day after day even when sure facets of his enterprise do line up: the meals is nice, the costs even higher, and nonetheless the restaurant is all the time within the crimson. Nevertheless it’s Bob’s perseverance within the face of recurrent failure that’s enduring and harking back to the wrestle most entrepreneurs have in reconciling their ardour with revenue and making an attempt to do enterprise the proper means.

Within the season seven episode “They Serve Horses, Don’t They?”, Bob goes towards his personal higher judgment and orders meat from the provider his neighbor and restaurant competitor Jimmy Pesto makes use of beneath the idea that it’s the identical high quality beef at a fraction of the associated fee. Because it seems, it’s truly horse meat, and Bob will get pulled right into a sting operation to reveal the rip-off even when it means persevering with to pay extra for actual beef.

In season 11’s “Romancing the Beef,” the Belcher household transforms Bob’s Burgers into the fine-dining restaurant Urge to capitalize on Valentine’s Day. It’s truly an enormous success, and Bob will get to reside out his fantasies of culinary grandeur. However, ultimately, he needs to return to his outdated restaurant, clearly intent on doing enterprise his means versus what might be extra worthwhile.

“[Bob] needs to say one thing together with his meals. He likes going to farmers markets and shopping for good substances. He takes possibilities, he combines flavors in ways in which he likes to assume have by no means been achieved earlier than,” Bouchard says. “However I believe he additionally doesn’t wish to have a flowery restaurant in a whole lot of methods. He likes a diner. He likes a greasy spoon. He likes a mom-and-pop burger store.”

Bob is the everyman entrepreneur. He’ll by no means compromise substances for the sake of worth. He’ll pay further to sprinkle chives on a burger or splurge on an espresso machine if he thinks it can elevate the client expertise—even when the entire above by no means interprets into what most individuals would name a profitable enterprise.

“I consider it as a tiny little bit of the curse of the job—a personality who has to simply carry slightly extra burden than he maybe ought to. However I prefer to assume it’s only a smidge of unhealthy luck,” Bouchard says. “I assume that’s the factor about eating places that I really like. It jogs my memory of different inventive endeavors, how anytime anybody units out to do one thing that doesn’t make any sense and has a excessive probability of failure, but they do it anyway.”