Quinn Adkins knew at the same time as everyone else when Culver’s made its now-famous April Fool’s joke saying it would sell a cheese curd burger called the “Curderburger,” even though he is the chain’s director of menu development and is a member of the marketing team.
“I didn’t even know about the prank,” he said.
Adkins certainly knows now. Because he is the one who took that joke and made it into an actual Curderburger. By Oct. 15, six and a half months after that joke, customers ordered so many of the official Curderburgers that most locations ran out in less than two hours.
In the process, it generated considerable marketing buzz for a chain not typically known for its viral social media.
“We’re not known for being risk-takers,” Adkins said. “We prioritize on restaurant operations and guest experiences that are reliable and delicious. We haven’t had to resort to the guerilla-style marketing and brand tactics that other brands use on a regular basis.
“This evolved very organically. It felt real and not gimmicky.”
One big Wisconsin Cheese Curd under a lightly buttered, toasted bun. Isn’t it beautiful? pic.twitter.com/NhLAISBySw
— Culver's Restaurants (@culvers) April 1, 2021
Culver’s doesn’t get the social media attention typical even for restaurant chains its size. Culver’s is only somewhat smaller, for instance than the Texas-based Whataburger. But Whataburger has 1.2 million Twitter followers compared with the 51,700 for Culver’s. The difference is somewhat narrower on Instagram, where Whataburger has four times the followers as Culver’s.
Many companies use their social media accounts to make April Fool’s jokes, often to create fake food offerings. The Culver’s tweet was relatively simple, a photo of a giant cheese curd on a bun followed by “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The difference between Culver’s joke and most such pranks is this one seemed possible. The tweet generated some interest, but people actually started craving the idea of a fast-food chain selling a cheeseburger with a cheese curd on top.
Customers quickly created petitions to convince Culver’s to actually start serving a cheese curd burger. “There was some energy there,” Adkins said.
“It really seemed like something we might be able to do,” he said. “We just got the ball rolling.”
Adkins started looking at prototypes in June and went through several iterations of a burger with a beef patty, a giant cheese curd on a Deluxe ButterBurger with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and mayo. The focus was, obviously, on the curd. It had to be a larger version of its bite-sized Wisconsin Cheese Curds. “It was critically important to me that this was very visually evident that these were cheese curds and not just a puck of cheddar cheese,” Adkins said.
Adkins said the menu development team knew quickly that the product had potential. “The first time we sampled it we were like, ‘Wow, this is something special,’” he said.
The company then set up a plan to launch the burger in time for Oct. 15, National Cheese Curd Day. That was about half to a third of the time it typically takes to develop a menu item.
Yet Culver’s was able to do this because it was to be served for just one day, with a limited amount of supply. That made it less of a risk. “Because of the very limited scope we didn’t have to follow our normal process,” Adkins said.
Adkins said the company had an idea the product would be popular and ultimately increased the amount of supplies given to each store. Yet on Oct. 15, customers quickly lined up outside the chain’s restaurants in the morning, waiting until opening so they could get their hands on one.
All the chain’s locations in Madison, Wis., ran out by noon that day. Many others ran out within two hours. Some Culver’s drive-thrus had long lines of cars that snarled traffic in and out of the parking lots. The chain sold 136,000 Curderburgers in all.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, at some point one of the Curderburgers landed on Facebook Marketplace. For $200. That was, uh, higher than the price Culver’s charged.
“It was a pretty wild day,” Adkins said.
So, the big question now is this: Will the Curderburger come back? And if so when? Will it last more than a day next time?
Adkins said the company is looking at sales numbers, guest response and operations. Culver’s sounds like a brand that wants to bring it back, given its popularity and its ease of operations. But it is carefully examining the response and the operations.
“The short answer is we believe we have something that really resonated with our guests and is relatively straightforward for restaurant teams to execute,” he said. “I don’t need to tell you that is a big, big consideration in today’s challenging times.
“I don’t think we will blithely throw this back into the ring. We don’t want to cheapen the experience. I definitely believe, just based on the initial feedback and conversations, that we’ve got something really special.”