When a Trend Stops Trending
I spent five years working the line at a restaurant that didn’t serve smash burgers, which meant I watched their rise with the kind of distant fascination you have for a neighbor’s obsession. You see it everywhere, nod politely, but something about it doesn’t quite click for you. Now, standing in my own kitchen and watching the data, I’m realizing I wasn’t alone in that hesitation. Google searches for “smash burger” peaked in the spring of 2024 and have dropped consistently since then, falling 22 percent through the end of 2025. That kind of decline suggests more than market saturation. Consumer interest is shifting. People are asking different questions now.
That shift is visible in other places too. Shake Shack, the restaurant that became almost synonymous with smash burger evangelism, recently reported that traffic during smash-specific dayparts has been flagging. They’re not panicking, but they are listening. The company has started testing thicker, stacked-style patties in 15 locations, which tells you everything you need to know. When a chain that built its identity on a particular format starts experimenting with something else, the conversation has already changed.
What fascinates me isn’t that the smash burger is disappearing. It’s that we’re starting to ask whether it should have dominated in the first place.
The Story the Smash Burger Forgot to Tell
Every food that becomes trendy carries a story, and usually, it’s a good one. The smash burger narrative was seductive: allegedly faster, allegedly crispier, allegedly more democratic because of how it used heat and surface area. What it didn’t do was acknowledge where this technique actually came from or why other burger traditions never abandoned their own methods.
Food history is rarely a straight line from obscurity to mainstream success. More often, it’s a complicated web of necessity, geography, available ingredients, and the stubborn preferences of people who made their food a certain way because it worked. The smash burger got trendy because it was easy to execute, easy to photograph, and easy to market as a revelation. But it was never a revelation. It was one approach among many, each valid in its own context.
I think about the burgers my grandmother made when I was small. She didn’t smash them. She’d gently form her ground beef, make a small indent with her thumb in the center so they wouldn’t puff up, and cook them in a cast-iron skillet with a lid. They were thick enough to stay juicy, thin enough to cook through without burning the exterior. She wasn’t wrong. And neither was the diner down the street that smashed its patties thin on a flattop. They were answering different questions with the same ingredient.
What the Numbers Actually Tell Us
When the Food & Wine Best Burgers in America 2025 list published its annual rankings, something notable happened. For the first time since 2021, no dedicated smash burger chains appeared in the top ten. Instead, the list emphasized dry-aged operations and restaurants working with whole-muscle grinds. That’s worth paying attention to, not because smash burgers are bad, but because it suggests the culinary conversation is moving toward different values.
The National Restaurant Association 2026 What’s Hot Forecast ranked craft grinding and heritage breed beef burgers as a top-five emerging trend. Meanwhile, smash formats dropped out of the top twenty for the first time. These aren’t subjective opinions. These are data points collected from thousands of chefs, restaurateurs, and industry professionals. The conversation has moved.
But here’s where it gets more complicated, and where my line cook experience actually matters. The decline in smash burger interest isn’t just about taste preferences or trend fatigue. Real practical considerations have started catching up to the format. Food safety researchers at Kansas State University published a study in 2025 documenting that ultra-thin smash patties on open flattops present elevated cross-contamination risk without rigorous temperature protocols. The USDA standard for ground beef is 160°F internal temperature. Not negotiable. When you’re working with a patty that’s a quarter-inch thick, hitting that standard while maintaining the texture that makes the smash burger appealing requires precision that not every operation maintains consistently.
What Happens When We Let Trends Be Trends
I’m not here to tell you smash burgers are bad. I’ve had excellent ones. The technique itself is sound, and when executed properly by someone who understands the thermodynamics involved, you get something genuinely delicious: a crispy, caramelized exterior and enough residual heat in the interior to cook the meat properly without overcooking it. The problem isn’t the smash burger. The problem is when one technique becomes so dominant that it crowds out everything else.
Food culture thrives on diversity. A city that only had smash burger restaurants would be a less interesting city. The burger itself, that simple, democratic sandwich, is big enough for multiple approaches. There’s room for the smash, room for the thick and juicy, room for the dry-aged whole-muscle grind, room for the stuffed burger and the smoked burger and the burger cooked entirely differently by someone’s grandmother in someone’s kitchen.
What I’m noticing now, as a cook and as someone who just loves good food, is that we’re giving ourselves permission to remember that. The trend exhaustion isn’t despair. It’s actually a kind of clarity. It’s us collectively saying: we tried this one thing very intensely, and it was good, and now we’re curious about what else is possible.
The Burger Keeps Evolving
The smash burger had its moment, and moments are supposed to pass. That’s what makes them moments instead of permanent truths. What matters now is that we don’t swing too hard in the opposite direction and dismiss the technique entirely. We can hold two things at once: the smash burger was a legitimate innovation that deserved its popularity, and the culture that created space for something else to emerge next is healthier for it.
In my kitchen, I cook burgers several different ways depending on what I’m thinking about that day, what meat I’ve sourced, what the weather is doing, and sometimes just what story I want to tell with dinner. That flexibility, that willingness to let the method serve the goal rather than the other way around, feels like the real lesson here. Not that smash burgers are over, but that they were never supposed to be the only answer.
What’s your burger story? Have you found yourself gravitating back toward a different style, or is there a technique you’ve been curious to try? I’d love to hear what’s landed on your grill lately and what drew you to it.