Life style is often thought to be a dirty word. Bunsen shows why it’s an essential attribute of every smart food business.

Bunsen’s southern branch, on French Church Street in Cork city, is a study in two exacting disciplines.
The first is hamburgers, of course. Bunsen is all about burgers. It’s all about how you create, make and serve, a hamburger, something Bunsen has done with consistent imagination ever since Tom Gleeson opened his first store on Dublin’s Wexford Street.
But just as significantly, Bunsen is a study in style. 
It’s a study in lifestyle branding, a study in how the look and feel of a place is every bit as important as what they put on your plate – or on your tray, in the case of Bunsen.
In Bunsen, everything lines up. The frontage. The fonts. The colours. The condiments. The cards. The burger wrappers. The t-shirts. The trays. The signage. The website. The social media. The loos. The door handles. The photography.
Nothing is casual. Everything is considered, curated, delivered. It’s a seamless fit. Jeff Koons would be thrilled by Bunsen, thrilled by its polish, its sheen.
Bunsen is a food entity where the identity is created by its style, just as much as it is by its content – i.e. the actual quality of its burgers. Those burgers are good, of course, but maybe not as good as the Dublin champions of Bunsen are so quick to assert.
But there is real pleasure in being in a space so assiduously thought-through, so rationalised. The style is as disciplined as the burger menu – 4 burgers; 3 fries; 3 drinks – and nothing has gotten past the design brief that doesn’t totally, completely, and utterly need to be there.
That’s discipline, and let’s not overlook just how important it is, and just how well Bunsen do it.