The Magazine

Cheeseburger (badge) in paradise

31

on January 12th, 2012

Foursquare today launched their latest expertise badge. Flame Broiled honors burger aficionados everywhere.

The unlock text reads:

There’s nothing like satisfying your craving with a bacon-infused, grass-fed Kobe beef burger nestled on a brioche bun. Or, you know, a good ol’ Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Sorry, make that a Royale with Cheese. (Oh you fancy, huh?)

Just like all expertise badges, you’ll be able to unlock Level 1 of this badge by checking in at the same burger spot five times or at three different ones. Level 2 unlocks after five different venues and each subsequent level takes another five to unlock.

If you’ve already satisfied the requirements for the badge (and satisfied your belly), you should unlock it on your next check-in at a burger joint.

What do you think of the new badge?

  • jubrand

    Woohoo! Bout time!

  • Chris Thompson

    And for those of you eager superusers who want to go out and change a bunch of McDonald’s and Burger Kings to Burger Joints — DON’T DO IT! Those are NOT Burger Joints. They’re fast food plain and simple. Find your nice, local burger joints and make sure those are properly categorized, instead.

    • http://foursquare.com/nikspeed nikspeed

      word!

    • Zach

      Since venues can have up to three categories, many of our local fast food places already have both fast food and burger joint. I generally only choose fast food but don’t change old ones unless there’s something else amiss.

      And how does this make me feel? Hungry. Hungry for Hardee’s. Sorry, but we have no “local” burger places. Only Five Guys and BGR which are chains.

      • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

        Five Guys is a legit Burger Joint (even if it’s not a “local” one). Chris’ point is more that random fast food that heavily advertise burgers are NOT burger places and shouldn’t be categorized as such. They’re still fast food.

        But Five Guys, In-N-Out, etc, those are burger joints.

      • Chris Thompson

        I fully agree with ack154 here. No problem with those places being listed as burger joints.

    • Brian

      Fortunately, most McDonald’s and Burger Kings should already be claimed, so there shouldn’t be the rogue miscategorizing them like there was when Greasy Spoon came out and somehow Denny’s and Steak ‘n Shake (which, by and large, aren’t prefabricated buildings) magically became diners.

  • guido.g

    starting to clean miscategorized venues … ;)

  • Sassy

    This is another ARGH for UK users. McDonald’s and Burger King are the closest thing to burger joints we have here. Same situation as the greasy spoon badge. We don’t have diners in the uk, we call our greasy spoons cafe’s so that’s how they are categorised.
    I won’t be changing McDonald’s and Burger King to burger joints but those places are probably the only way the majority of Uk users could get this badge.

    • http://www.neilturner.me.uk/ Neil T.

      There are a few places like Gourmet Burger Kitchen – but you’re right, most places here that do burgers are fast food. Neil M’s been keeping a list of tidied-up McDonald’s venues – maybe some SU3s need to go through it and lock any that have been tidied up but haven’t been locked, to stop the categories being changed.

      Sadly McD’s and BK haven’t claimed their UK venues yet.

  • Ruffian

    Are they just going to make a badge for every single venue category that exists? ‘Cause it’s starting to look that way… =/

    • Lahatiel

      I wouldn’t be surprised if the end up doing just about that, over time — given the increasing emphasis on encouraging exploration, they’ll want to A) encourage people to get out to as many categories as possible, because they need the check-in data to power the Explore engine; and B) they’ll want to encourage users to build up their expert levels in all of these category-based badges, because I’m sure they’ll use that data in increasing and decreasing weights given to certain users tips and check-ins.

      I imagine that a tip left at a burger place from a someone with a Level 4 Cheeseburger badge will be more likely to show higher than someone without that badge. Similarly, I imagine that if two burger places are similar in all other facets but one has many check-ins from many Cheeseburger badgeholders but the other only has a few, that could be a factor that would might cause the first to list higher in the Explore results. So yes, I’m sure that just about all categories will eventually get expertise badges, in order to generate the check-ins that will power the data engines.

  • guido.g

    if a venue is categorized fast food as primary category and burger joints as secondary , the badge will still unlocked ?

    • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

      No. Only the primary category counts for badges. And if it’s Fast Food for a primary one, that’s probably correct.

  • no6v

    BTW, why doesn’t this badge appear in expertise trophy case? It can be seen in foursquare’s.

    • Chris Thompson

      Not sure what’s going on with that. I’m sure they’ll get it fixed soon.

  • vincent

    This is an EPIC badge that I am sure to collect real soon! Thank you FourSquare!

  • Thomas Kernen

    Same here, making sure the BKs and Micky D’s stay as fast food and that the few burger joints we have are recognized. Else glad they have added this badge.

  • Joanne M. Giampietro

    I LOVE it and have been waiting for a burger badge forever!!!!!

  • guido.g

    ack154 :
    No. Only the primary category counts for badges. And if it’s Fast Food for a primary one, that’s probably correct.

    ty!
    that’s an important information that wasn’t in my toolbox ;)

  • Mike

    Looking at the text of this badge which is

    There’s nothing like satisfying your craving with a bacon-infused, grass-fed Kobe beef burger nestled on a brioche bun. Or, you know, a good ol’ Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Sorry, make that a Royale with Cheese. (Oh you fancy, huh?)

    It would seem to suggest that McDonald’s, Burger King and possibly Wendy’s should have the primary category of Burger joint.

  • http://robert.aitchison.org Robert Aitchison

    I’ve been to quite a few burger joints, but last year I went on a diet (lost >80 lbs) so I almost never go anymore. I’m sure I will pick one of these up eventually my love of a good burger cannot be denied forever :)

  • Brett A

    After communication with foursquare staffers, they agreed that McDonalds, BK and the like are perfectly acceptable as Burger Joints.

    (the badge text certainly confirms that, “a good ol’ Quarter Pounder with Cheese”)

  • Mike Labrie

    I am assuming that they should have Burger Joint as the first category and then Fst Food Place as a second category.

  • Mike Labrie

    With the new Merchant rules in place it seems we can no longer chnage the category on Burger King Venues.

    We are able to edit McDonald’s and Wendy’s for the time being.

    The new badge is called Flamed Broiled yet you won’t be able to get it by checking into a Burger King at least in my area.

  • Zach

    Mike Labrie :
    With the new Merchant rules in place it seems we can no longer chnage the category on Burger King Venues.
    We are able to edit McDonald’s and Wendy’s for the time being.
    The new badge is called Flamed Broiled yet you won’t be able to get it by checking into a Burger King at least in my area.

    Just another reason to dislike the new merchant rules. :(

    I understand protecting listings from the riff raff, but for superusers it’s like they’re saying we aren’t to be trusted. Oh well, if BK doesn’t want to be known as a place for burgers, that’s fair to me. ;)

  • 5square

    Anybody else think 4sq is secretly trying to make us all fat?
    I understand that food badges are the easiest to produce and obtain because of the many different categories… but it seems like the majority of core and expertise badges are all food related.

    Suggestions for additional core badges:
    -velo/bicycle badge (checking into bike shops)
    -commuter badge (bus stops & train stations)
    -disco badge (nightclubs, not just karaoke)

    Just getting tired of food badges.. And sorry for the delayed comment, was on vacation over the weekend.

  • 5square

    per a personal suggestion.. I have actually posted my badge ideas on getsatisfaction.. If anybody is still reading posts and comments from this far back.. please look for my suggestions and feel free to share your thoughts.

    http://getsatisfaction.com/foursquare/topics/new_realistic_badge_suggestions

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