WHAT HAPPENS AFTER LUCKY BURGER CLOSES 
A few more details to add to our ground-beef-breaking report yesterday on the demise of Lucky Burger: The business’s current owners, who’ve operated the 40-year-old fast-food joint at the corner of Richmond Ave. and Mandell for 15 years, plan to retire. An employee tells Culturemap’s Eric Sandler that the owners couldn’t afford the landlord’s pricing for a lease renewal, and that “prospects in Montrose for a space that’s sufficiently inexpensive to support a $5 cheeseburger are simply too dim.” Meanwhile, Braun Enterprises’ Dan Braun, who heads the partnership that bought the building and the adjacent strip center in 2011, tells the Chronicle‘s Erin Mulvaney that they hope to lease the structure with the barrel-shaped roof penetration to another business once Lucky Burger is out. (Entrepreneurs salivating over the marketing power of a well-known burger stop in the shape of a beer keg might want to note that craft beer bar Revelry on Richmond is set to open soon next door, with hamburgers on the menu.) Lucky Burger plans to wrap up its business — and its last burger — before this Saturday. [Culturemap; Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston. It’s Worth It.
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Does anyone know the origin of the barrel? Perhaps an old XXX Root Beer stand?
I assumed they’d keep people on short term leases to allow the whole center to be blown up and redeveloped soon. Most new shops won’t want to go into the location without a long lease but I don’t see the owners giving someone 5+ year term
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Eh. I could be wrong though.
Had lunch there today, I am going to miss that place…
Someone could just add a handle to the barrel and turn it into a coffee shop.
So after 40 years in business, 15 years with the current owner, they don’t own the building? No one wants to buy it and continue the concept? ok.
Another bit of character and history lost.
Did anybody actually like this place?
I blame Anvil for bringing all this bullshit to Montrose. Everything good or weird or seedy is going away. Enjoy your artisanal cocktails.
Ah the joys of New Urbanism. Such a delight to watch it bulldoze its way through old neighborhoods and its unwitting adherents pee themselves, excited by the novelty of what replaces them, never minding the fact that, in a few years time, that “novelty” factor will exhaust itself , like a child grown bored with his new toy. And what will replace it? Whatever it is, what is novel now, will hear the roar of the bulldozers once again.