McRib and Me: New York Affordable Burgers Burger

GREAT BURGERS at an AFFORDABLE PRICE

"THANK YOU CAFETERIA at JUBILEE MARKET"

This is a GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE to BROOKLYN NY & MANKIND

TASTY SLIDERS at an AFFORDABLE PRICE

SLIDERS are Just $2.55

NEW YORK'S Most AFFORDABLE BURGERS

THANKS to This MAN "YOUNG KIM"

At the start of the month, something interesting happened in the world of New York burgers. (If it wasn’t for TikTok, I’m not sure anyone would have noticed.) In the western reaches of Greenpoint, at the foot of a 40-story apartment complex, and right by another one being built, a small cafeteria started selling burgers inspired by the legendary New Jersey diner, White Manna.

But instead of charging Greenpoint prices — the condos upstairs are listing for a million dollars each — the burgers were priced at a reasonable $2.15, or $2.55 with cheese.

All of the ingredients for the burger come from the attached supermarket, which is one reason the price is lower. But that’s not all that’s happening. Kim is doing something unheard of in the restaurant industry and selling the burgers “at cost,” the price of ingredients, plus labor, before a dish is marked up for sale. He makes about five cents on each burger, meaning for every thousand he sells, he makes about fifty bucks.

You can look at his burger as a loss leader — a way to get people into the grocery store downstairs, where the prices are higher. But the longer you talk to Kim, you might start to view it as his life’s work. “It’s expensive to eat in this neighborhood,” he says. “We wanted to do something everyone could enjoy.”

Some days, he flips patties behind the grill. That’s where Rob Martinez, a producer at Righteous Eats, found him earlier this month. Martinez says he was drawn to Kim’s personality. “If there’s not a real person behind [the business], we wouldn’t do a story,” he said in a text message. He profiled the business in a video that has since been viewed more than 500,000 times between TikTok and Instagram.

“This burger costs less than the subway,” Martinez says on camera. Jubilee Market is now selling hundreds of them a day.

Kim has actually been selling burgers since last year, but until recently, they were bigger and more expensive. “It wasn’t clicking,” he says. One day he did something wild: He came into work with a bag of White Mana hamburgers, which were cold because they came from New Jersey, and he asked his business partner to perform a miracle. “He wanted me to recreate them,” says Samantha La Manna, “but better.”

So, La Manna went downstairs, where the market performs whole-animal butchery, and took some meat left over from trimming steaks. She ground it up, shaped it into a patty, and cooked it on a flat top grill with shaved onions, like at White Mana. Unlike White Mana, she put a clove of slow-roasted garlic in the middle. It seeps into the patty’s pores, making the meat taste buttery and homemade.

It’s not a White Mana burger, but it is a La Manna one, and it’s wonderful.

Those are the touches of a career chef. Before La Manna was making two-buck burgers, she worked at several Brooklyn restaurants, including Cozy Royale. Two years ago, she was up for a job at Francie, a Michelin-starred restaurant, when she saw something funny: a grocery store had posted a job listing on Indeed looking for a “culinary director.” Thankfully, she applied.

Kim and La Manna are now doing everything they can to keep up with demand. Before they were featured on Righteous Eats, they were selling maybe 200 burgers a day. But overnight, the number doubled. Then it doubled again. Most days, they sell around 600 to 1,000 burgers, but the most they’ve sold is 1,300. On days like that, they sell out and have to close early.

You don’t have to do the math to know the burgers aren’t making anyone rich. And for once, that might not matter.

The cafeteria at Jubilee Market is open from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The burger is available from noon to 9 p.m.