Burgez is dead: here's why Italy's most irreverent fast food restaurant is in crisis

Burgez, born to be the villain of Italian fast food, has made irreverence its core business. "Eating Burgez seriously harms your health", "Does it disgust you? Good, that means it's ours'. To some it made some people laugh, to many it made people argue, but to all it made people talk.

Burgez was born in 2015 out of a mystical (and somewhat fictional) enlightenment between founder Simone Ciarruffoli and a homeless man in New York. From there, the sandwich became 'smasha', communication went viral and the brand expanded. Milan, Rome, Bologna: venues everywhere, until it invoiced almost 12 million euro in 2022, but with a loss of € -2,401,442.
Burgez did not set a school for irreverent marketing. Let's say he never went to school. He played the rebel, the sandwich nerd, the guy who sells you a cheeseburger and even makes fun of you. And while you're little, it works.

You are the burger bully who defies McDonald's with memes and avalanches of sauces. But then you grow up. You become a leader in your niche (smash burger in Italy) and from there on you can no longer just do outsider marketing. Burgez did not understand the change of phase: from launching to maintaining.
He continued guerrilla marketing, creating controversy and gaining visibility. Fake complaints of exploitation inside sandwich bags? Controversy. T-shirts on 'true doggy style' for Women's Day? Controversy.

The provocation as the only language works and I like it, but when it becomes a system, it becomes noise. And with noise no one can communicate anymore and no relationship is created. On social, brands become people, and if values are not shared, if battles are not espoused, a relationship with users is not created. We can attract attention by making a lot of noise and we can make ourselves known to a lot of users by going viral, but only the sharing of ideals creates a bond.

Burgez has also been described in recent years as a social success story, but if we consider the number of current followers: 94,894 and the average engagement rate developed, 0.05% (a metric that measures how much an audience interacts with the content of a social profile), and an average of 43 likes per post, we understand that they are all users who know the brand, but are not related to it, are not involved and perhaps never were. They were just impressed.