My favourite burger in the city so far has to be the Craft Red; 6oz fresh, never-frozen Ontario AAA ground chuck made and cooked to-order, roasted red peppers, gorgonzola cheese, rosemary mayo and lettuce. Dee-lish. I'm salivating thinking about it right now.
Interestingly, after 4 years, Craft Burger just underwent a major re-branding. Well, maybe not an entire re-branding, its core brand identity is the same but the strategy involved changing its name to Big Smoke Burger. Thankfully, I'm told the menu and staff/management are the same.
A mid-course name-change is a bold, risky move for any business, especially one like Craft which has been building steady word-of-mouth around its product.
However, I really like the new name. "Craft" was a bit ambiguous and potentially confusing. It could easily be confused for Kraft (and I'm sure the association with common, mid-range grocery items and process cheese slices is incongruent with the image of a higher-end burger place) and Tom Collichio's restaurant, Craft in New York and Las Vegas. Incidentally, Collichio also has a spin-off chain of high-end sandwich shops cleverly named 'wichcraft.
I love the double entendre of Big Smoke; it conjures images of burgers on a smokey grill but "The Big Smoke" is also a pejorative nickname for Toronto that the chain has reclaimed and spun into a positive.
I guess they're firmly rooting the brand in Toronto's identity which is probably a good move to reinforce the fact that they're a local business.
I also noticed they kept the word "craft" in their tagline "hand crafted burgers" which I guess is the original reason they called themselves "Craft" in the first place so they get to keep that messaging and highlight that point of difference without the confusing name.
At the end of the day, whether it's called a Craft Burger, or a Big Smoke Burger, I just want my same juicy, satisfying hunk of dead cow.
