When it comes to premium burger joints, some franchise owners and mom-and-pop entrepreneurs are betting that Spokane is hungry for more.

Some restaurant operators have imported celebrated restaurant chains, and others are expanding home-grown concepts.

Frank and Shanna Haney, owners of Rusty Roof's Burger & Shake Shack, plan to open a second restaurant with the same name in the University District in July.

Shanna Haney says the couple opened their first Rusty Roof's at 101 E. Hastings, in 2009 because there weren't many premium burger places on the North Side.

"We came from California, where there were good places on every corner," she says.

Rusty Roof's has 12 employees at the Wandermere store, and likely will have 14 to 16 employees at the U-District store, Frank Haney says.

"We try to help out students and local vendors," he says. "We use a local bakery and local meat processors."

The second restaurant will occupy 2,400 square feet of space at the former Ionic Burrito location, at 1415 N. Hamilton.

"The whole idea is we had the opportunity at that location to expand what we already do," Haney says of the decision not to carry on the Ionic Burrito concept.

Though the U-District restaurant will be just a few blocks north of Wolffy's Hamburgers, Haney says the restaurants fit slightly different niches.

"We make our own frozen custard, and we're introducing new things," he says.

Ionic Burrito, formerly Sonic Burrito, took the Ionic name when the Sonic Drive-In, an Oklahoma City-based hamburger chain, opened an outlet here in 2006, claiming ownership of the Sonic name.

Fatburger

The Kalispel Tribe of Indians, the Spokane-area franchisee for the Southern California-based Fatburger chain, also plans to open its second burger restaurant in September. It will occupy 2,000 square feet of space in a building shared by a Starbucks Corp. outlet at the northwest corner of Ash Street and Francis Avenue, in the Five Mile Shopping Center.

Aimee Hubbard, the director of franchise operations for the Kalispel Tribal Economic Authority, says the tribe first brought the Fatburger franchise to the Northern Quest Casino in 2009, because, "We knew it wasn't a brand that was in Eastern Washington, and we wanted to bring in something fun that wasn't here."

She says the Fatburger inside the Airway Heights casino consistently ranks in the top 10 in sales among all Fatburger restaurants.

"Right out of the gates, it was one of the most successful Fatburger restaurants," Hubbard says. "That prompted the tribe to want to do more."

Fatburger's hamburgers range in size from the small 2.5 ounce beef patty to the 24-ounce XXXL Fatburger.

Fatburger restaurants typically employ about 30 people, Hubbard says.

The tribe also plans to acquire a "Fat Trailer" from which it will serve Fatburgers at community events, she says.

The tribe's franchise area includes the Inland Northwest and western Montana, she says.

Wolffy's Inc., a home-grown, old-fashioned hamburger company, has one restaurant but is looking to expand.

Wolffy's Hamburgers occupies 900 square feet of space, at 1229 N. Hamilton, in the U-District, where it has been located for four years.

Justin Davis, son of company co-founder Robert Davis Jr., says the company is scouting out possible locations for new restaurants on the North Side and in Spokane Valley, and he's confident the company can expand although it doesn't plan to go outside of the Spokane area.

"If we tried to go to a new market, it would be scary trying to make a name for ourselves," Davis says.

Wolffy's niche is that it's a local, family-owned business, he says.

"You can go in and talk to the owners. We're cooking the food and waiting on tables," he says. "You get a different level of customer service from that. We get to know customers, and customers know us."

Davis, his wife Cheyenne, and his parents Bob Jr. and Beverly Davis can split duties between the planned stores and retain that family character, he says.

The original Wolffy's Rockin' '50s restaurant, founded by Bob Davis Jr. and his father, opened at Monroe and Francis on the North Side in 1988. The family sold that site to Safeway Stores Inc., which put in a gas station there in 1996. The Davis family also operated a Wolffy's restaurant in Spokane Valley, but sold that to devote time to Wolffy's Old West Steakhouse, which the family sold in 2006.

Five Guys

Five Guys Burgers & Fries, the Lorton, Va.-based burger chain, is a recent franchise entry in the Spokane market.

Five Guys has opened three Spokane-area restaurants in quick succession, the latest one on the North Side last winter in a multitenant building near the northeast corner of Holland Avenue and the Newport Highway. The franchise opened its first Spokane-area outlet in 2010 on the South Hill, at 2525 E. 29th, and its second a year ago in Spokane Valley, at 10 N. Sullivan.

"There was nothing in Spokane when we got here that does things the way we do things," says Patrick Carls, operations manager for Five Guys' franchises in Eastern Washington and Montana. "All of our menu items are made to order, right there. There are no freezers in any of the stores."

Carls says sales have remained strong at all of the stores, although each has different sales peaks. The Valley store does best during the lunch rush and on weekends, Carls says, adding that the South Hill store has a larger dinner crowd, and the North Side store, has more balanced lunch and dinner crowds.

Five Guys isn't planning any more stores in the Spokane area in the immediate future, Carls says. Instead it's looking to the Tri-Cities and Yakima markets next. The franchise here also would like to negotiate with the Idaho-area franchise owner for rights to open a store of its own in North Idaho, he says.

Crazy G's, a mom-and-pop operation that opened three years ago has settled into its own niche, says Gary Swiss, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife Chris.

Swiss says he decided to open a premium burger restaurant at the age of 56 to fulfill a lifelong dream.

"I wanted to try to do it the way it used to be; when food was real," he says.

Crazy G's features 6-ounce certified angus burgers with various fixings. The restaurant occupies 1,800 square feet of space in a retail center at 821 N. Division, where it employs eight people, Swiss says.

He says the concept for Crazy G's has to be owner-operated to be successful, and one store keeps him busy enough.

"I'm not going to open a second store," Swiss says. "That's way too much work."