In April, the INDY reported on the opening of Al’s Pub Shack—the third restaurant from the owners of the beloved Al’s Burger Shack—whose traditional pub fare and homey vibe showed a significant deviation from the other Al’s locations.
Today, Al and Melody Bowers announced that Al’s Pub Shack will be closing, effective immediately, and reopening on July 8 as Al’s Burger Shack.
That was fast.
“The original initiative was to create a neighborhood hangout, and I still think that we have accomplished that,” Bowers says. “We’re just going back to a familiar brand.”
On social media, Bowers presented the change as a response to customers’ wishes, saying folks expecting to order their Burger Shack favorites—like the Bobo Chili Cheeseburger, which TripAdvisor called the best burger in America last year—came to the Pub Shack to find, to their dismay, only one burger on the menu.
But this afternoon, Al Bowers told us the re-opening was mostly about “the prospect of having more locations” and his desire to concentrate on the Burger Shack’s well-established brand.
“It’s better for our overall company business to make the change now, to stay true to who we are and what we do, and that’s that we make really good hamburgers,” he says.
Burger Shack fans will have to wait on information regarding future locations, which Bowers says is currently “a hush-hush kind of thing,” but he hopes to open a new spot very soon, and the Governor’s Village location will now be serving the same items as the other Burger Shacks.
“Even some of the things on the secret menus of the other locations are on this menu,” Bowers says. “Like the ‘shack-tine’—that’s our version of cheese fries, of poutine, really.”
The only difference between the third spot and the others is something many will likely see as a pro—the Burger Shack in Governor’s Village will have a full bar, including a wide selection of local beers on tap and in bottles.
Comment on this story at food@indyweek.com.
Support independent journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
