You are not ready for “viral”
Published Sept. 22, 2025
You are delighted as you get into the building. A crowd of people gathered around your restaurant shout questions as you enter. “Are you guys gonna open early? We can’t wait to try your burger!”
“What the hell is all that?” you ask your prep cook. He saw them staking places near the front door as early as 8am! Only your host seems to know why. “Didn’t you see that Tik Tok about us?” she asks, showing you the video on her phone. Everything starts well enough.
A young man sits in his slightly messy bedroom, unwrapping your burger carefully, his speech almost whispery as he talks about your store. He takes a bite and makes a dramatic face. His narration still soft, “This is the best burger I have had in my life. I love this burger.” He seems to stare directly at you.
Your eyes widen, your face reddens, as this 20-ish year old kid then proceeds to start french kissing your burger like he’s in a 90’s Rom Com.
“They’re here… because of that?” You ask. You’re told it’s funny, don’t worry about it. All advertising is good advertising!
Your shock only deepens when the door opens. You call another server immediately, you’re jumping from grill to floor to help as the line never seems to diminish. On the floor you watch droves of people on their phones repeating the childish and outlandish scene from the video. By lunch time families you recognize from the area are ordering their food to go instead of dine in.
This continues for 15 days. The local news shows up. You’re running double staff. It’s non stop. You’re tired, your team is tired. When the storm blows over, you have paperwork to catch up on.
Between overtime, extra staffing and food costs you stare at the screen. There’s no way. 15 days of people lined up & down the block; 15 days of grueling work. And for that? LESS profit than an average two weeks.
This is not a horror vignette. Restaurants have faced this exact situation after “hitting it big”. [1,2,3]
“I don’t believe you”
How could doing something profitable cost me money with a line out the door? I know it’s profitable, I run a tight P&L. I want that line around my building. A brief number summary we’ll use as a rolling example before we cover what specifically goes wrong;
Why a full line can lose money
Units sold: 5,500 burgers in 15 days
Normal food cost/burger: $3.50 → spike to $4.05 (+15%, meat & cheddar, new buns)
Lost add-ons (shakes, apps, drinks): –$2.10 contribution per guest (line fatigue + equipment down)
Overtime + surge labor: +$0.80 per burger equivalent
Net swing: –$2.45 contribution/burger × 5,500 = –$13,475 vs. normal operations
The Details-
Non-average-able costs
Massive alteration to sales mix
Alien wait & sit times for the concept
The Clout Crowd
Team and equipment strain
Losing control of the funnel
Non-average-able costs:
Say we’re the burger place in the story above. You run a tight P&L, with intense monthly reviews. This surge of customers happened over fifteen days. It also coincided with rising beef costs and a pop in the cheddar market. You had to add two new skus of more expensive sesame seed buns because there was a shortage.
The wildfire news in town had two others places try and get a slice of the action with direct marketing against your burger. Viral videos can inflict logistical challenges to whole state markets. [4,5]
Normally you could eat fluctuations like this, things tend to average out. But you just sold 5,500 units with 15% more food cost than normal, and you’ll sell ~1,200 at normal cost to finish out your statement. This clearly doesn’t land in your favor.
Alterations to sales mix:
That first day when you filled up right at doors open was stressful but sweet. You were serving milkshakes, apps, everyone ordered a burger and your servers were doing a great job with the add ons. Day two you had to turn off all online ordering portals, the kitchen couldn’t keep pace. By day three you ran out of bacon mid shift. Day seven, a shake mixer went down and the servers stopped pushing them, too stressful. By day twelve the guests were insistent on only ordering burgers and getting out. There was a two hour wait and many came only to try this viral burger.
When you don’t have control over the narrative, buyer motivations can be radically different from what’s profitable. Where as burgers may contribute 50%+ of your profit, you enjoy a sales spread of some steaks, a wide array of apps and a significant portion of revenue in mixed drinks. For the last 15 days your mix is a mess. All of your due, net 30 invoices are now paid against burgers. If each invoice averages 100 burgers to pay, that 5,500 units starts diminishing quickly.
Sit times & Clout Crowd:
The wait times were awful. Most of the reviews posted on Google Maps were, surprisingly understanding. Your grills were running non stop, people saw it was busy and understood they were here with a crowd. Almost all of the friction was smoothed over, but not all. Your ticket times went up by shear volume and you are sure that at least some of the food went out with lower standards just because of the strain. You just hope it was to the newcomers and not local business.
What was also surprising, that you wish you handled better were the… film crews? Teenagers and even adults in flashy clothing with ring lights, microphones and four phones as cameras. They complained that their tables were given away because they were crawling around filming.
They interrupted your servers for interviews and even pestered other guests. Six people would come in, occupy a table during the whole cook time, order two burgers, film themselves eating and then leave. On top of this they ate half of both burgers and just wasted the rest.
Team & equipment strain:
That milkshake mixer breaking down wasn’t even half of it. Two staff members fell into tears, one cook left in a rage and at the end of the day you went from having 18% average labor to 26% for extra hands. This was before over time. You were in helping the prep guys every day after the first. They needed to stay late to make sure you had food to serve at night. Your small team was working doubles almost non stop. You had to call your cousin to come help on the fryers.
Now half of the servers want a week off to recover and all of your hosts said that they are looking for new work after dealing with customers and two hour plus waits. You might need to cut operating hours next week because you’re not sure you have staff for full day shifts. Not to mention you haven’t had a break at all either.
Funnel Control:
You have emails from your social media guy saying that the local targeting and new posts aren’t working as expected. Your viral interaction has now put you into a wider market and somehow 20% of your views are now coming from Malaysia. You doubt anyone is going to make the trip from Kuala Lumpur for dine in. You have to restructure your whole media outreach with him soon for local users to see posts effectively.
Your Google Maps analytics still show huge peak hours with exaggerated sit times, and big flashing columns saying “Not busy right now”. Your photos now include a handful of people kissing double cheeseburgers. The crowded photos of the dining room reveal dirty tables and full trash cans. Did you turn all the pick up and delivery services back on?
Where does this leave us?
Thankfully, this isn’t a problem that occurs commonly. Virality is the lottery ticket of the industry, which we’ll discuss in “Real social media strategy”. This actually serves as a case study for contingency planning for SMB restaurants. If your city, or local chamber of commerce lands a new street festival located right in front of your restaurant, it may do you well to consider some of these problems. Limited menus, streamlined ops, crowd control with drink booths, quick bites and more substantial plates pre-planned around costs and inventory you control before the crowd arrives.
At the end of the day having the customers is a great opportunity. But like any opportunity in the business you need to be proactive in addressing and controlling the outcomes. Another article, “Volume Contingency” will be posted this week after “Real social media strategy” to cover some of these techniques.
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