The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 11, 1998

Check the E-Mail, Hold the Fries
At New York's Wired Burger King

   By TIMOTHY HANRAHAN
   THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION

   NEW YORK -- "It seems silly, to tell you the truth," says Guy Tower,
   clicking away on the keyboard raised several inches off the counter,
   safely above what remains of his large fries. Then again, he says, "I
   hadn't checked my e-mail in a couple of days."

   Welcome to the world's first wired Burger King, in the heart of
   Manhattan's financial district. Tourists send e-mail to friends back
   home, while oppressed junior Wall Streeters check sports sites without
   worrying about firewalls or looming bosses.

   The strangest thing of all about the whole setup is that it doesn't
   really seem that strange at all. After all, the Internet is everywhere
   these days -- why shouldn't it be battling for counter space with
   condiments and cardboard crowns? But this acceptance only shows how
   quickly the world is moving -- even a couple of years ago, a bank of
   personal computers in a fast-food restaurant would have been the stuff
   from, well, cheesy sci-fi.

   Call the wired Burger King either the clearest sign yet that the
   Internet is indeed the most compelling communications device since the
   telephone, or a sure indication that we've all lost our minds. Or
   maybe call it both.

   Whatever the truth of the matter, it's certainly a marketing coup.
   Franchisee Peter Abramson has set up 20 Pentium II-powered PCs and 20
   diner-style stools along a back wall here. When you purchase a
   king-size value meal, which runs about $5, the cashier gives you a
   ticket with a PIN number on it, good for 20 minutes of Internet-access
   time. There's no porn, no gambling, no saving and no printing. And no
   precedent. But it seems to be working.

                                                        Wired Burger King
                                                A recent lunchtime crowd.

   "The feedback has been incredible," Mr. Abramson says. "This will pay
   for itself very quickly."

   Mr. Abramson has been a Burger King franchisee for 22 years and has a
   number of Burger Kings scattered around the New York metropolitan
   area. He opened this one, in a basement on a grimy stretch of Broadway
   just east of the World Trade Center and north of the New York Stock
   Exchange, in November. The restaurant took the space abandoned by the
   Recession Cafe, known locally for a sign out front depicting a
   plunging stock market. "I guess they didn't have a positive outlook,"
   Mr. Abramson says.

   Mr. Abramson, a onetime engineer, wanted his latest Burger King to be
   a "cutting edge" showcase in hopes of standing out from the fast-food
   pack: A Roy Rogers, Wendy's, Subway and two McDonald's restaurants are
   within a couple of blocks. The restaurant opened with a circular
   column of 27 televisions playing sports highlights and other packaged
   programs -- an interesting, if odd, flourish -- and a self-service
   soda machine, a rarity here. At the time, Mr. Abramson says, he was in
   talks with Oracle and Zenith about offering Internet access via the
   companies' set-top boxes. But nothing came of it. So he signed up
   consultant Steve Boxer, who crafted the customized computer system and
   designed a New York-centric home page. Internet access was first
   offered late last month.

   The Burger King neatly meshes with the new image of the financial
   district, which has been endlessly touted of late as a mecca for
   technology start-ups and a new high-tech residential neighborhood.
   Music seller N2K's headquarters are located nearby, as are office
   buildings turned apartment houses that boast high-speed Net access.
   Burger King hopes to feed the converted -- and to attract
   out-of-towners visiting the Wall Street area or South Street Seaport.

   After all, the McDonald's down the street has a piano player and free
   postcards, and tourists flock there and pay way too much for a Big
   Mac, even by New York standards. Mr. Abramson is looking to do better:
   His food is cheaper, and he has plans for electronic postcards.

   "What do the Internet and Burger King have to do with each other?" he
   asks rhetorically. "Nothing." But when put together, he says, they
   produce synergies, "tremendous value" to the customer. Something like
   french fries and ketchup, one imagines. (Alas, the fries here hew to
   the new Burger King recipe: They taste vaguely nonpotato, like they
   just came out of a Star Trek food replicator.)

   Mr. Abramson shrugs off any comparison to the stalled cybercafe trend
   of several years ago -- a curiosity you'd check out once and then
   never think of again. Cybercafes, he says, "dealt with a limited
   number of people. We want to deal with a cross section. They charge
   money. We're free."

   He's also tried to make the computers friendly for both families and
   nontechies. The system is both heavily tweaked and stripped down: The
   computers are loaded with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and little
   else. The right mouse buttons have been disabled to discourage poking
   around in the hard drive, and the mouse shells have been glued
   together so no one can remove the roller ball. And "everything is
   bolted down, except for the mouse," Mr. Abramson says. (One omission:
   membranes for the keyboards. But Mr. Abramson says he's looking for
   them -- and notes that no one has spilled anything yet.)

   The connections, dedicated 56K lines, are fairly speedy. You accept
   the user agreement, basically promising not to burn the place down,
   and the Whopper icon floats off the screen, to be replaced by a custom
   portal screen. Mr. Abramson said he may begin selling ads in the
   space.

   Last Friday evening, there was still a healthy (if not healthful)
   eat-in crowd of about 20 people, most of them outwardly unimpressed.
   This is New York, after all, home of the perpetually bitter and jaded,
   with any oohing and aahing reserved for fanny-packers in Times Square.
   But what about the French couple looking at a French newspaper
   on-line? Surely these veterans of the utilitarian Minitel would find
   this fascinating, or at least provide some aesthetic critique.

   Guess again. She is "surprised." He is nonplussed. It is
   "interesting," he manages.

   Like Tucker with his movable third headlight, Mr. Abramson is
   convinced that he's on to something big. He and Mr. Boxer plan to
   expand the system to other Burger Kings, and then take aim at "other
   environments" where the Internet could help drive business. They
   declined to be specific, but added that they could set up a similar
   system for interested parties for about $30,000. Mr. Boxer says the
   Internet is "better than the toylands" often seen grafted onto
   suburban fast-food restaurants. "And no insurance costs," he adds.

   There are still glitches to work out, to be sure. Some sites, like The
   Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition and the New York Times,
   couldn't be accessed, presumably because the computers' hard drives
   refuse to accept cookies. Also, the porn filter -- like all such
   protections -- isn't 100% secure. It didn't take one college-age kid
   long to pull down some illicit photos and proclaim, "We've got [chest]
   here!"

   Write to Timothy Hanrahan at [log in to unmask]
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