My Burger
Headquarters: Minneapolis
Inception: 2004
Family name: Abdo
What the company does: Quick-service burger restaurant
Type of ownership Private, LLC
Owners: Caryl, Corey, John, Larry, and Paul Abdo; Mandy Abdo Sheahan
Employees :125
Family members in business: 3
Family members on board: 3
“Family first, we always told the kids. If the business gets in the way of family, the business goes.”
—Caryl Abdo, partner, My Burger
“We’re not growing a business,” says Larry Abdo. “We’re growing a great family. How many families miss that piece?”
It’s a good question, emphatically issued by the patriarch and creator of My Burger, sitting in his Marquette Avenue office in jeans, chewing on an unlit cigar.
“Family first, we always told the kids,” explains spouse and partner Caryl Abdo. “If the business gets in the way of family, the business goes.”
That’s a compelling sentiment given the family’s century-plus presence in the Twin Cities business world.
Abdo’s grandparents arrived in the U.S. from Lebanon in 1909, operating a corner store in northeast Minneapolis, Abdo Market House, for decades. (Caryl’s family founded discount retailer Shopper’s City in the 1960s.) From there, through successive generations, the family moved into ice, pizza, parking ramp restoration, health food, real estate—and today, My Burger, the Nicollet Island Inn, plus Gopher State Ice and Big Fat Bacon at the State Fair.
Though food businesses have been foundational, the family has gone in different directions as well. It’s less about one specialty than an approach. “My dad’s an opportunist entrepreneur; he goes where the money is,” says son Paul.
Larry doesn’t disagree. “I consider my profession whatever I’m doing at the moment,” he says. “My curiosity far exceeds my intelligence. I follow my curiosity.”
But it always comes back to a core set of values. “These are principles we’ve had since Grandpa came over: Lead with moral beliefs, ethics,” Larry explains. “Work as a family so we can have a wonderful life and be proud of what we do. I could have made a lot more money doing other things.”
The origin story of My Burger is this: In 2003, Larry bought 601 Marquette in downtown Minneapolis. “That skyway just wanted a hamburger place,” he recalls. After an operator got cold feet, “I thought, I can do this.” A devotee of In-N-Out Burger’s simple formula, he figured the business model shouldn’t be complicated: “They’ve never changed to meet the market.”
His burger wasn’t a copy. There’s no signature sauce. Instead, sauteed onions added a “hot, heavy quality,” explains Larry. He also decided to salt the underside of the patty so the umami-rich caramelized meat is not subsumed in toppings.
Larry knew he needed branding and marketing and tried to hire Minneapolis branding agency Fame but couldn’t afford their fees. Instead, he offered to pay in stock in the unproven startup. Shockingly, the Paris-based CEO of parent company Omnicom Group signed off. Family and friends make up the rest of My Burger’s investors.
Son John, now CEO, wanted to join My Burger out of Notre Dame. “I told him to get a job instead,” Larry says, “but he was committed.” His dad relented. “I told him, let’s do something glorious, then.”
“We’re four English majors,” adds John. “Our parents have [U of M] business degrees. So our success is probably osmosis.”
Originally My Burger looked to open 50 to 100 franchise locations, but the company remains much smaller. “We don’t have a rigid plan,” Larry explains. “You grow with the skill sets for what you’re doing. You’re predisposed in how your mind works, but then you lean in.”
Midlife, My Burger dialed back its ambitions. Franchising and out-of-market growth were tabled so the company could remain family-run and local as a means of maximizing quality. The pandemic was a stress test. “We were always about fresh, best, reasonable prices, but about two years ago when everything [in fast food] pivoted to kiosks, we went the opposite way,” John explains. “We believe people are looking for hospitality, and it also builds you into the fabric of the community. We didn’t cut staff, so our guests always get a personal experience.”
Today, there are eight Twin Cites stores (versus a dozen Five Guys and more than 20 Culver’s, competitors My Burger measures itself against), and the company is ready to start growing again, to retain and reward its top employees. The goal is to add two to three stores a year based on a model My Burger created early on. John says a store needs to do $1 million in annual revenue to pass muster, and if it can generate $1.5 million, that’s “really good.”
“Our staff are empowered to believe it’s their store, managers to believe it’s their business,” says Paul. “Those are values we’ve imparted.”
All the Abdos are at least tangentially involved in My Burger. Larry remains on the board. John is CEO, Paul handles real estate and marketing, and older sister Mandy Abdo Sheahan manages branding, guest experience, the food truck, and philanthropy. Brother Corey runs the family’s Nicollet Island Inn and consults with My Burger on hospitality.
Yet the story hasn’t been exclusively hot and juicy. “We had conflicts over control and money,” explains Mandy. “John is my boss, but there are times I go full big sister. We’re all opinionated, we all have our own ideas, but we still have dinner together on Sunday.”
Perhaps that’s their parents’ values in play; perhaps it’s a special kind of Minnesota magic. “Us kids working at the Fair from a young age was so intense,” says John, “you can’t help but learn how to work with each other as adults.”
