Place: Chadder's
Lunch: Stubby Double, Fries (with fry sauce), lemonade
Imagine opening your own burger joint. It's a single store operation. It's not a franchise...you designed the menu, the store layout, the whole concept. And before you opened, people were already clamoring at the door. And when you opened, they never stopped coming. It was wall-to-wall customers every open hour of the day.
Did you come up with a great concept?
Not if you're Chadder's. If you're Chadder's, you stole In-N-Out's concept. You copied their building design right down to the color scheme and the angles of the order counter. You copied their menu, giving their burgers your own names. And you trained your employees on their "secret menu" so that if somebody asked for something from it, they could fulfill the order.
Frantic In-N-Out fans actually contacted In-N-Out to find out if it was them building this thing. That prompted a visit from In-N-Out, incognito, to see what was going on. That visit prompted a request for a court injunction to shut Chadder's down.
Chadder's responded by dressing up the building a bit with some blue trim, and giving the menu board a yellow background. They also claimed they weren't using any In-N-Out trademark menu items...their customers were.
And a judge bought it and didn't make them close. But the suit is pending.
It's a BLATANT copy. Seriously. As you approach it, it looks like an In-N-Out that was closed and sold to somebody else.
There's one small problem...Chadder's burgers suck. The beef patties are overcooked and dry. The sauce is a weak copy. They bear nothing of the flavor of a real In-N-Out burger.
Nobody seems to notice. They were doing an insane amount of business while I was there.
Much like the typical In-N-Out.
It's 100 degrees in the shade today. Time to hang out at the pool. An indoor air-conditioned pool.
