TEXAS, USA — Great, I have your attention! Let's take a bite out of this online study.
I'll take you behind the curtain a little bit. In news, we get A LOT of these "studies" from PR company's about the most random things. It's always "Texas ranks the best for X" or "the worst for Y" or some made-up national holiday-related content like... well, just like this one we're about to talk about.
Sept. 18 marks "National Cheeseburger Day." Normally, we just talk about these studies in the newsroom for fun banter and move on. But this one in particular caused a stir in the newsroom that I found, personally, worthy of posing to y'all.
Top Data sent us their top burger chains study in honor of the holiday, broken down into the state's top three or four or five (each one had a different amount) favorites.
So, Texans... What are YOUR top 5 burger chains?
Whataburger has got to be on the list, right? Nope, not on this list.
But, surely, there's no way "that" west coast burger chain is on this list then, right? Yep, sure is -- sitting pretty at No. 2.
Wild stuff.
Anyway, here is the top 5 list of top burger chains for Texas, according to Top Data's study:
- A&W Restaurants
- In-N-Out Burger
- Steak N' Shake
- Shake Shack
- Culver's
The group behind the study even provided a fun graphic of the national outlook for top burger chains:
First thought: What went into this study and how did it not include what is arguably the premier Texas brand of fast food chains, let alone burger places?
Well, Top Data said this about its methodology:
"To determine the favorite burger chains, TOP Data used a combination of GPS tracking data from the largest burger chains mixed with a survey of 1,000 Americans."
When looking at the A&W restaurant locator, there are 21 in Texas -- and they're primarily in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex (10) and San Antonio area (5). The others are in Austin (2), Del Rio (1), Lubbock (1), San Angelo (1) and Houston (1). It should also be noted that the Top Data study did not clarify how many of the 1,000 Americans surveyed were from Texas.
So, the sample size may be small, but these rankings clearly make for great fodder (pun intended).
It's OK, Texas. You can cringe at the Whataburger-less list and show it to all your friends. Whataburger has seen this, too.
To see the top burger chains for other states across the U.S. – according to Top Data, that is – click here.
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