Burger Index: QPR at Loftus Road

Our second entry, and our first Championship ground. Same rules as always — one item, no additions, and we read the price list as a financial document.

The index entry

The burger

Individually wrapped, factory-produced, and dry enough that it needed a sauce it didn''t come with. This is not the char-and-onions cooking our first entry showed us — it''s a mass-catered patty reheated to order, and it tasted like exactly that.

5.6/10. For comparison, our only other entry so far — Kingstonian''s pre-season fixture at Ashford Town''s Robert Parker Stadium, three divisions below this one — scored 9.2 for a burger costing £4.50. It''s early days for the index, but the first data point runs directly against the assumption you''d expect: bigger club, worse burger, higher price.

The price list, and the surprise in it

We came in expecting Championship prices to sting. They didn''t, particularly — £15 admission for a pre-season friendly against Fiorentina is, if anything, restrained next to what plenty of clubs at this level charge for a warm-up game. That''s not where the story is.

It''s in the £5.60 for the burger itself, sold under its own sub-brand, "Burger85," on a menu that also lists a cheeseburger at £5.90, dirty chicken fries at £9.25, and a "Pie & Pint" meal deal at £13.00. This is a proper commercial catering operation, with its own branding and a laminated board that looks nothing like a volunteer-run tea bar. It has a marketing name. It does not, on this evidence, have a better burger than a club charging £1.10 less at a ground five divisions down.

And then there''s the Carlsberg: a 500ml can, poured into a plastic cup, for £7.25 — more expensive, per millilitre, than the £6.50 draught pint of Estrella at our first ground, and served in a smaller measure with none of the pull of an actual tap.

Why this matters

It''s one comparison, not a trend yet — the index needs more entries before any pattern is worth trusting. But the instinct that catering quality scales with club size and commercial polish took an immediate hit here: a Step 8 club with a volunteer-run hatch beat a Championship club''s own branded concession operation, on both price and quality.

Whether that holds is exactly what the rest of this index is going to test.

Next week: wherever we end up.

The Pyramid runs the Burger Index at grounds across the pyramid — same item, same rules, every time. Read the first entry: Kingstonian at Robert Parker Stadium.