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$10 or less: RIBCO burgers affordable

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By Stephanie De Pasquale | Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:02 PM CDT | () comments

RIBCO burger basket (Jeff Cook/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

VIDEO: $10 or less: RIBCO
The dollar-seventy-five burger baskets at RIBCO in Rock Island keep stomach…
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The idea of offering a burger and fries special was the idea of RIBCO owner Terry Tilka’s brother, Pat Tilka.

When the two owned O’Meara’s Pub in 1980, Pat convinced Terry to sell a quarter-pound burger with french fries for $1. The only catch was customers had to order a drink to get the deal.

At the time, Terry thought Pat was nuts, but 28 years later RIBCO is still selling 300 to 400 burger baskets on Monday and Tuesday nights and the price has only gone up 75 cents to $1.75. The bar and restaurant even runs a drink special on burger basket nights of $1.25 for a select beer.

“O’Meara’s is now gone. My brother is now living in Florida, and pretty much half the bars and restaurants in the Quad-Cities have copied it,” Terry Tilka said. “It’s so affordable it’s almost ridiculous.”

RIBCO offers some form of live entertainment every day it is open except for Mondays. Tilka said if it weren’t for the burger basket special, the bar and restaurant wouldn’t even be open that day.

“Monday nights typically in our industry are pretty slow, so we chose to do Monday and Tuesday here,” Terry Tilka said. “We have to create our own business and customers. For the college kids and some of the bicycle groups or the Cornbelt Running Club or groups of people from the Arsenal who get stuck working, sometimes 20 or 30 or them will show up.

“It’s kind of fun. Nobody’s in a hurry. Everybody knows it’s inexpensive and we have a lot of fun with it.”

The majority of RIBCO’s burger baskets are eaten by the students at area colleges, like Kevin Conte who comes to RIBCO at least once a week for the deal.

“It’s a good cheap night for food,” Conte said. “When I came here to school and I heard about this, it’s definitely a great deal. Especially when you’re a poor college student.”

Conte is also fond of RIBCO’s beer-battered french fries that come with the burger and said for bar french fries, they rank at the top of his list.

Tilka said RIBCO once upgraded to a different type of fry and received so many complaints from customers wanting the beer-battered fry that he switched back.

RIBCO makes its profits on burger baskets from the drinks ordered with the meal, but to keep from losing too much money on the food, Tilka does charge a few extra cents for accompaniments such as tomatoes and lettuce. But even a burger with all the fixings and a drink wouldn’t cost more than $4, he said.

“If I was a college kid on a budget, that’s where I’d be going,” Tilka said. “Unfortunately I’m an old guy with a lot of kids who play baseball on Monday night. But we sneak over here with the kids once in a while.”