Al’s Hamburger celebrates 90 years in business

Kat Halfman

Past Contributor

February 21, 2024

GREEN BAY — Ask anyone in Green Bay about hamburgers and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t eaten at Al’s Hamburger.

Located in its original spot at 131 S. Washington St., Al’s Hamburger was started in 1934 by Al Rank.

Today, the Green Bay staple is celebrating its 90th anniversary — and though the decades have changed, Al’s Hamburger hasn’t.

A bit more history
Rank’s son, George, took over the restaurant in 1960, and the Rank family continued to run the restaurant until 2016.

At that time, Michael Wirz purchased the building and the rights to the Al’s name with an ownership group made up of five individuals and a business.

“All the recipes were handed over with the stipulation that we wouldn’t change them,” Travis Engels, partial owner, said.

Engels said Wirz stepped aside in 2019, but the rest of the ownership group retained the business.

Ownership is shared between Engels, Shari Van Straten, Paul Thompson, Shane Todt and South Washington Holdings — with Engels handling most of the management.

Al’s Hamburger has been a staple on Washington Street in Green Bay since 1934 — started by Al Rank. Submitted Photo

“It’s a collaborative effort between Shari and I,” Engels said. “She takes more of the day-to-day responsibility.”

Though Al’s is no longer family-owned, Engels said they still cultivate a family environment.

“Even when Mike took over, and still to this day, we run it as if we’re all family,” he said. “We’re not blood, but that’s one of the things we push, is you treat everyone like they are. You serve the customers like they’ve been coming in here every day — and a lot of them have.”

Management philosophy
Engel said his passion for cooking goes back to his childhood, where he fondly remembers binge-watching the Food Network.

“I’ve been cooking all my life, since I was old enough for my mom to trust me around a stove,” he said. “I love to cook. I worked at Sonny’s Pizzeria in Luxemburg for eight years, and then I got out of the restaurant industry for a while. In 2019, I started cooking at and managing Jimmy Sea’s, and I stayed there until they shut down in 2021.”

The ownership group that owns Al’s Hamburger also owns and manages four other Green Bay businesses.

“We also own The Rabbit Hole, The Nines, Stir-Ups Parlor & Saloon and Kittner’s,” Engels said. “I manage all of that, and for a while through COVID-19 I was doing Jimmy Sea’s as well. So, I was working and helping here a lot, and at that time I was doing about 150 hours a week. I slept three or four hours (a night), if I was lucky, for two years.”

Both Van Straten and Engels said the restaurant industry’s reputation for blood, sweat and tears is well-earned, but with the right team and strategy, things can run smoothly.

“The theme might be different for each of our restaurants, but the management strategy is the same,” Van Straten said.

Engels said employees are expected to show up on time, work as hard as the person next to you and treat everyone with respect.

“The biggest thing is to be honest,” he said. “We’re all human. We all make mistakes. Learn from it. Try not to repeat it.”

With a family attitude and a management strategy that encourages shared responsibility and respect, Engels said their ownership group has been able to expand successfully.

“Now we have 80 or 90 employees between everything that directly report to me,” he said.

Van Straten said she also has prior restaurant experience — though hers is more behind-the-scenes with a background in accounting.

“Some of our ownership group previously owned restaurants that I did accounting for, so I’m not unaware of the industry,” she said.

‘Oh, yeah, Al’s’
Being well known in Greater Green Bay is one thing, but Engels said Al’s Hamburger has garnered national attention as well.

When Alton Brown — world-renowned chef and host of “Good Eats” — was in town for his “Eat Your Science Tour” at the Weidner Center in 2017, Engels said he visited Al’s.

Brown shared some photos of himself and his order — a burger with fried onions and a side of tater tots — on social media, and though none of the owners were at the restaurant when Brown visited, Engels said it helped put Al’s back on the map.

“It really got the buzz going,” he said. “People remembered, ‘oh, yeah, Al’s,'” he said. “Since then, we’ve had quite a few big names in social media, who travel around and write articles on different restaurants, come in and do reviews.”

Travis Engels said Al’s has had a handful of celebrity chefs stop by for a bite — including Alton Brown and Man V. Food Host Casey Webb. Submitted Photo

Al’s Hamburger was also featured in an episode of Man V. Food in 2019 when Wirz was still acting manager.

“They reached out to us,” Van Straten said. “We have no idea how they found us.”

Van Straten said Host Casey Webb ordered the Tailgate Burger, which is made with fresh cheese curds, jalapenos, bratwurst, sautÈed onions and German brown mustard.

To beef up Al’s Hamburger’s social media presence, Van Straten said the ownership group hired a social media manager, Heather McClone — an addition she said has had a noticeable impact on their business.

“She posts every day, and she also reposts customer pictures, which gets people excited about sharing their pictures from Al’s, since they could be featured on our page,” she said.

Changes
Van Straten said when the Ranks owned Al’s, “it was more of a breakfast/lunch place.”

“They closed at two or three in the afternoon,” she said. “When our ownership group took over in 2016, the plan was to shift toward lunch/dinner and try to get the crowd that’s down here in the evening for Meyer Theater events and everything that’s going on downtown.”

Even though some changes were made, Van Straten said the goal has always been to maintain the classics while bringing the menu into the 21st century.

“We wanted to make it a little more trendy, so we brought in different kinds of bread, and we brought in the Salmon’s hot dog and brats,” she said. “We also introduced the Tailgate burger for (Green Bay) Packers’ fans.”

Engels said Al’s still sources its products from Wisconsin, specifically Green Bay, as much as possible.

“Our hot dog, for example, comes from Salmon’s Meat Products in Luxemburg,” Engels said. “Our brats and cheese curds also come from here in Wisconsin.”

Van Straten said the goal was to modernize Al’s, “but we also knew it was important to keep the staples the same, like the classic hand-pressed burger and hash.”

Two years ago, Van Straten said Al’s introduced two new monthly promotions — a burger of the month and a shake of the month.

“We’ve always allowed people to mix and match shake flavors, and that inspired the shake of the month,” she said. “The burger of the month came about because we wanted to see what people liked for menu changes, to keep it interesting — and some of the items we’ve come up with have permanently made the menu, like the mac & cheese burger or the chili cheese burger.”

Another recent addition, Van Straten said, was Al’s walk-up window, introduced last year, to create a space for people to pick up their to-go orders more quickly.

“This is a very small facility,” she said. “So, if people order to-go and they’re just standing around, they’re often blocking seats or the entrance. The walk-up window helped a lot with traffic.”

In addition to clearing out more space, Van Straten said the walk-up window also provided a new opportunity for Al’s to be open late nights, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. — when the weather is warm enough.

Shari Van Straten said Al’s walk-up window — which is open late nights from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. — should open up again sometime in March. Submitted Photo

“We’ll probably start our late-night bites back up again in March,” she said. “It’s pretty popular during the summer block parties.”

Another significant change to Al’s, Van Straten said, was accepting credit cards — which has also helped business.

The fire
In 2011, Engels said Al’s caught fire, and because of the damage it caused, the interior had to be remodeled — a project that took three years.

He said the grill was relocated and a new exhaust hood was also installed.

“The contractor that redid it in 2011 didn’t complete everything up to code, and so there was a lawsuit between the Rank family and the contractor,” Engels said.

The lawsuit went to court, but Engels said the contractor failed to show.

“The contractor didn’t believe in lawyers and did not show up to the court date, so the judge awarded the settlement to the Rank family — which was partially for loss of revenue over the three years they were closed and partially for the remainder of the cost to get everything up to code,” he said.

When Owner George Rank passed away, however, the contractor reopened the lawsuit, which Engels said he thinks was the reason the Rank family decided to sell Al’s.

“George passed away in 2014, the contractor countersued for what he had lost and won. Shortly after that legal battle, in 2016, the Rank family decided to sell, which was a hard thing for them to do, especially after 82 years in the family.”

Authentic to tradition
Engels said the COVID-19 pandemic “definitely impacted us negatively.”

“We were closed for two months, and then we did online, which was a struggle because (the online platforms) take a percentage of the profits,” he said.

Though Al’s has felt the rising cost of labor and goods, Engels said they have always tried to keep prices affordable.

“We’ve tried to keep our prices as low as we can,” he said. “We do have to be profitable, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Our goal is always to keep it authentic to honor the Rank family and their tradition.”

Van Straten said she keeps a close eye on the market to ensure Al’s prices are competitive.

“When we first took over, we were paying line cooks $11-12 an hour, and that’s almost doubled since,” Engels said. “That’s just to maintain a quality staff — I mean, we could hire anyone, but we don’t want to. We need a staff that cares. Luckily, we have a great group.”

A part of the community
Van Straten said one of the big drivers of business in the warm months is Downtown Green Bay’s Farmers’ Market.

“The menu is the same, but we open at 10 a.m. instead of 11 a.m. for that,” she said. “Anything in the downtown area drives business here because everyone knows Al’s.”

Engels said it’s exciting hearing news about businesses and housing coming to the downtown area.

“Since COVID, the downtown area isn’t as hustle and bustle as it had previously been, and we’re hoping to rejuvenate that and get more people down here,” he said. “More shops, more businesses, more people walking around — coming in and using the trails, picking up food, sitting by the river to eat and stuff like that.”

To show its appreciation for first responders, Van Straten said Al’s offers a 20% discount to all police, fire, and EMS personnel — which she said is pretty popular.

“We also offer 10% off to what we consider our neighbors, anybody that works or lives on south Washington Street,” she said. “I don’t think everybody has figured that one out, though there’s one guy who lives across the street who comes in every Friday for a fish sandwich.”

Another discount Al’s offers is for its business of the week promotion.

“We have a bowl where people can drop their business cards, and every Monday we pick a new card,” Van Straten said. “We put the business’s name and contact information on the board, and anyone who works there gets 20% off that week. It’s also free advertising for them.”

Engels said in addition to the business of the week card drop, Al’s also always has a boot out collecting donations for H.O.O.A.H. Wisconsin, a military organization aimed at eliminating veteran suicide.

“We donated burgers and fries to last year’s (H.O.O.A.H. Wisconsin’s) Ruck March participants,” Van Straten said.

With 90 years of service behind them, Engels and Van Straten said they hope to continue serving the Green Bay community for many years to come.

For more on Al’s Hamburger, visit its alshamburgergb.com or check out the restaurant’s Facebook page.