California Burger — Restaurant in Indianapolis

Of course, as with all of my reviews, let me preface this with how I arrive at a given score. I take into account ALL variables and aspects of the visit, assign them a 1-5 star rank, average the product, and round down to the nearest star level (as Google doesn’t permit 0 or .5 star ratings).

This establishment is registered as a “Fast Food” restaurant, that serves burgers and the expected accompaniment in an atmosphere similar to another “Palm Tree Cali” chain (cannot be named for infringement). These 2 key factors will be very important in explaining my score in a moment.

Pros: -Clean exterior (interior closed due to COVID) though it is a new establishement. -Easy to understand menu. -Customer service skills were excellent, employee working the drive through speaker and window was polite and friendly. -Burger quality was great, I’ll say 4 of 5, making this the best burger I’ve had so far in Indianapolis.

Cons: -Extremely long wait (141 minutes from queue to served, yes I’m serious). -Average order service time 21 minutes, PER ORDER... -Ingress/Egress is hazardous to traffic on 16th street due to poor planning. -Fries are not offered in true California form, which would be thin shoestring like the real “Palm Tree Burger”, instead the fries are crinkle cut or curly (upcharge). -Fries are cooked in the same oil as the strange lower menu offerings such as the fish, and it was obvious when my curly fries tasted like a fish stick. -No “Animal/California style” option like “Palm Tree”. -Milkshakes appear to be custard based, as they are incredibly thick. Now, the flavor was good, but if it is soft serve based, the machine is getting too cold and making the milkshakes semi-solid. True Cali style would be drinkable through a straw at time of service. -For the obvious color and palm tree logo references, it is no match for the real “California Palm Tree style chain” from the west coast. Thus detracting points for attempting a stab at league that they are not prepared for.

All in all the BURGER was good to great, and that is the sole reasoning of the visit, so that nets big bonus points for the overall score, sparing them the dreaded 1 star review. Also, as I said earlier, the burger is the best in Indianapolis so far. However, this is a “fast food” establishment that took 141 minutes from the time I entered the drive through line on 16th street, to the time I received my food. I timed how long it took vehicles to reach the speaker and receive their food, which in this industry is called “average ticket time”, and they failed miserably with the worst ATT I’ve ever seen of 21 minutes per vehicle. Correlate that to waiting in another fast food burger joint’s drive through, and it will be unacceptable at the 120-180 second mark, with McD’s aiming for 90 second goals ATT.

Of course, quality is more important, but the proprietor of this establishment has not found the reasonable balance of quality versus speed, and something in their process must be majorly incorrect for this level of failure. I saw many vehicles either attempt to enter the line but turn around, or vehicles in line leaving due to the time. This is the absolute worst thing you can see as a business owner, as literal dollars are driving away simply due to inability to serve. Statistically, if a customer is offended negatively at first visit, they’ll never return; and, I believe that this massive turnaround rate that I witnessed will have a deep impact on the long term success of this location after the hype wears off. Also, California Burger trying and failing to meet the real “Cali Palm Tree” chain level is going to make customers always compare it to the real thing, and say it’s just not as good. They need to completely reevaluate the entire model of this daring restaurant. I know that for instance I liked the burger, but I’ll never return given all other...

Me And My Husband decided to visit this New California Burger place on the west side of Indy to Support and see what the hype was all about !! Since We Were on that side of town so we arrived in line at Exactly 3:30pm there was a very nice young man who work there walking the extremely long line passing out their menus he was very polite with good customer service so that part already won me over to sit a little longer and see how long it takes us to get up there to place our order not thinking it was going to take us four hours 330pm to 730pm I usually don’t do anything like this but I was for sure that my food was gonna be very good needless to say I was not happy I have a picture of my fries that were awful my burger didn’t give me a wow at all and it was dry’ I don’t know if it was because they were so swamped but that’s no excuse especially when customers wait that long they should make it a priority to make sure the burgers give you a wow but in between all this extreme business they need to have a back up fryer because having good fries always makes a meal good and the fries were terrible and should not have been served all of our fries were terrible so me and my daughter didn’t care for our sandwiches but my husband sandwich was very good he had the California melt with sourdough bread Even tho the Bread was not toasted like it should have been’We will try them out one more time but it want be until everyone has tried them out and it will be early when they open!! I’m also giving them a call about this as well!! Good Luck Everyone your Experience may be different!! They only get a Two Star...

I heard all the buzz about this place and finally decided to give it a shot. I lived in California for a bit and was curious if the place lived up to its “In-N-Out of Indy” status.

At first, it was really confusing with the drive-through and parking situation - you can’t walk into the restaurant AND you can’t easily get from the small parking lot into the drive-through line either. I wish there were some signs that would block the parking lot entrance.

The wait, like many posted here, was quite long. I spent about an hour on a Saturday. To me personally, the wait was not worth it and if I had to do it all over again, I would pass. However, I wouldn’t wait an hour at In-N-Out burger either, although I like it a lot.

In terms of the menu and food - the menu was quite large and there were many burgers to choose from + shakes and soda. My order was done fairly quickly and everything was correct. I can’t say my burger was close to In-N-Out and those French fries definitely weren’t. In my opinion, Five Guys is closer to In-N-Out if that’s something you are looking for. And Five Guys would take 10 mins instead of 1 hour. All in all, my food tasted good, but I can’t say I would rave about it. Price was ok.

I noticed the staff at California Burger was very friendly and attentive. Definitely a big plus and I like supporting local businesses that are trying hard.

To conclude - this is a nice spot to visit and food is tasty, but the wait time is just too long to keep coming here. If you’re expecting the In-N-Out flavor, I’d say you wouldn’t get it here. But food and shakes taste good...