| Heart Attack Grill bypasses nutrition guidelines, political correctness with ‘to-die-for’ operation
By RON
RUGGLESS
“We only sell no-filter cigarettes for the adults and bubble gum cigarettes for the kids,” Basso said. Bill S., in a post in mid-January at
www.yelp.com
, said: “The atmosphere is like nowhere else.… The wife’s feathers were a little ruffled the first five minutes or so after we took our seats at the counter. But halfway through her ice-cold beer, she and the waitress started swapping waitress-working-my-way-through-grad-school stories. By the second beer, they were bosom buddies swapping men-bashing stories. This waitress was sharp. I tipped her 40 percent at the insistence of my wife.” This semianonymous poster remained impressed with Basso’s business model, however, calling it “an eatery where the entrepreneur turns ground beef, potatoes and lard into CASH, using pretty much only a heat source and a spatula!” Basso also has received his share of negative publicity. In late 2006, the Arizona attorney general threatened to close the restaurant because of its use of the term “nurses” in referring to the waitstaff. In addition, servers “write prescriptions” rather than take orders and customers are referred to as “patients.” Nursing advocates claimed that Basso was denigrating their profession. Basso, who calls himself “Dr. Jon,” cited his right to freedom of speech in defending his concept. He was arrested, however, after attempting to open a live fire hose on a group of picketing nurses. That drew the national attention of conservative media commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Geraldo Rivera, whose coverage of the nurse-waitress dispute and the Heart Attack Grill has been broadly positive and tongue-in-cheek. Basso reached a compromise with officials that called for him to put a disclaimer on his website that stated: “The use of the word ‘nurse’ above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our website actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and all its employees do not offer any therapeutic treatments.” Basso says much of the Heart Attack Grill’s success has been because of the entertainment value and the restaurant’s theatrics–part of the positioning that sets the grill apart from other burger spots. For instance, after customers devour a quadruple burger, which also has four layers of cheese and 12 slices of bacon, they have the option of having a waitress transport them to their car in a wheelchair. Basso said that about 10 customers take the restaurant up on its wheelchair offer each day. | 
