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Drive-thru burgers

Burger Boss

Kimberton Road, Plot P5

The corner of a drive-thru restaurant: a deep navy roof band with a hooked, rounded underside sweeps out over dark-framed floor-to-ceiling glass, a BURGER BOSS sign raked across its face, red brick beyond.

Kimberton Road has one drive-thru, and Burger Boss will tell you so on the tray liner. It takes the east half of a long, low building on the Bestholme corner: thirty-three metres of red brick and glass split down the middle, with Jerk Hut in the other half. What you notice first is the roof. A deep navy band wraps the whole unit and kicks out a metre and a half past the glass, hooked and rounded underneath like the peak of a cap, with the BURGER BOSS sign raked across its face on the front, the end and the back.

The front door faces the zebra crossing on Kimberton Road, square on, so you can come straight over from the terraces. Inside it is bright, tiled in grey and glazed on two sides: tables and stools, a bar along the east window for eating on your own and watching the traffic, and a long red counter with three menu screens over it and a stainless kitchen behind.

The front of Burger Boss straight on: a flight of steps and a ramp up through a hedge to the glazed front door under the navy BURGER BOSS roof band, yellow barrier rails either side.
The front door, square to the zebra crossing on Kimberton Road.

The menu does not pretend to be anything else. A Classic cheeseburger meal is £8.99, a Double Smash £10.49 and a Buffalo chicken burger meal £9.49, and every meal comes with fries and a drink. On the side there are buttermilk wings, six for £6.49, loaded fries, a corn dog and a cookies & cream shake that the straw cannot cope with. Two burger meals together are £16.99, for two people or for one very determined person.

It comes on a red tray with a paper liner, and the liner is worth the money on its own. THE BOSS’S RULES run from The Boss is always right to Trays go in the rack, not up your jumper. A Double Smash has exactly two patties, and the liner wants you to know that the staff counted, then Kyle counted, then they had a meeting. Among the reviews is Gary from Radworth, who asked for no gherkins, got extra gherkins, and now considers it personal.

Inside Burger Boss: two red trays with printed paper liners on a wooden table for two, a cheeseburger on each, black chairs round it and the red counter behind.
A table for two, and a burger each. The liner is compulsory reading.

The drive-thru lane goes round the whole building, and the British way round, so the windows are on the driver’s side. You come in from the car park under a yellow height gantry (2.7 metres, and it means it), run along the front, turn at the east end past the order boards and their speakers, and come back down the rear past two hatches: 1, PAY HERE, and 2, COLLECT. A seven-and-a-half-metre totem out on the verge carries both names for anyone coming along Kimberton Road. Walking round it is not a drive-thru, the Boss would like it known. It is a walk.

The drive-thru lane down the back of the building: a strip of tarmac with a white arrow, a hedge on the left and the brick back wall with its serving hatches on the right.
The back lane: pay at the first window, collect at the second.

The kitchen runs from eleven in the morning until half eleven at night, and the YouChew riders are in and out of the door all day, collecting bags for people who are too far away, or too comfortable, to come down themselves.

The brief for this building was one word: better. The roof took longer than some whole streets, and the tray liner went through more drafts than the roof.

The tray liner

Every tray gets one. There are rules, a deal, a word search you can actually finish, and reviews from the people of Radworth.

A Burger Boss paper tray liner: THE BOSS'S RULES, a TODAY'S DEAL box at 16.99 pounds, a twelve-by-twelve BOSS WORD SEARCH, WHAT YOU LOT SAID with five star-rated reviews, and a DID YOU KNOW strip along the bottom.

Tap it to read the small print.

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