A new burger chain launched by former staff from Betty’s Burgers & Concrete Co., is aimed squarely at driving a change to Australia’s quick service space. Slim’s Quality Burgers is the brain child of Nik Rollison, Michael Tripp, and David Hales, and is currently operating out of two locations in Sydney: one in Marrickville Metro, and another in Westfield Mount Druitt. The idea, according to Rollison, is to bring fresh, local ingredients to fast food. “We want to bring a fresh-made pr
h-made product to every order, using the healthiest product we can, such as hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and preservative-free ingredients wherever possible,” Rollison told Inside Retail.
“This fabulous country has so much wonderful produce, so needing to go overseas for food and beverage [supply] is redundant. That’s critical for us.”
Slim’s is aimed squarely at offering its products at a similar price point to other fast food operators, such as McDonald’s and Hungry Jacks, and plans to expand into more locations, but the chain is adding its own unique flavour to the landscape so everyone knows a Slim’s when they see one.
Drive-in is in
One of the main focuses of the team is making Slim’s accessible to everyone by expanding the different ways it serves customers. Of course, there will be dine-in stores, but the business also has its eyes on both drive-through and, interestingly, drive-in eating.
“We’re building a slew of drive-throughs with a drive-in component, that’s our big point of difference,” Rollison said.
“When it comes to Slim’s Quality Burgers, the name, the verbiage, and a bit of its store design is a retro throwback. And one thing you see, especially in the United States, is that many burger operators have a drive-in model where you can pull your car up to the front of the building, order from your car, pay from your car, and eat in your car. No one in Australia is doing this.”
While this kind of offer was popular in the 1950s and relied on staff taking orders from each car, with today’s technology, Slim’s will be decked out with QR codes at the end of each car space so customers can easily order from their phones.
This also has the added benefit of minimising person-to-person contact, which is now important following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Slim’s currently has six sites in the works, each with enough space to allow for a drive-in model.
Source: Supplied.
“We wanted to make sure that our drive-in-slash-drive-through buildings’ shape and structure were 100 per cent unique, and we’ve managed to do that,” Rollinson said.
“Nothing’s trading yet, but I think the market will be surprised at how different and unique the building shape and structure is.”
The business was actually supposed to launch prior to the pandemic, but Covid-19 delayed the project until this year, Rollinson explained. However, the extra years of reflection proved to the team that launching Slim’s was the right call.
“We learned during that period that fast food is resilient. It’s resilient to downturns in the economy, and lots of these fast-food operators performed very well even when the pandemic was at its height,” Rollinson said.
In a perfect world, Rollinson said, Slim’s will be trading out of 10 locations by the end of 2023, and wants to expand at a rate of around 10 to 15 stores a year from that point onward, focusing on Australia’s eastern seaboard.