Burger-Tron

From Candypedia
Burger-Tron
First appearanceSmall Fry, page 5
May 23, 2014
Related charactersPaulo, James, Miranda, Lauren, Daisy, Mike, Tess, David, Lucy, Ellen, Chris

Burger-Tron is a space-themed fast-food restaurant in Roseville, within walking distance of Roseville High School.[1][2] It has been Paulo’s part-time workplace since Small Fry.[1] Thanks largely to its off-menu milkshakes, it has become the friend group’s default treat venue, almost always at Daisy’s urging.[3]

Description

Burger-Tron is a standalone single-story brick building with its own parking lot.[4][2] A dark purple fascia carries the name in big yellow letters beside a round burger logo, and yellow-and-red striped trim runs along the roofline.[4] Customers come in through glass double doors, and a brick alley with an overflowing dumpster sits behind the building.[5][6]

Inside, cash registers line a long counter beneath the menu board, with a band of diamond-patterned accent tile running along the wall behind it.[7][2] The dining area has booths with green cushioned benches and pale-yellow tables on a red tiled floor, and larger beige tiles take over near the counter.[4][8] The back of house has a meat slicer and a dish-washing station with a high-pressure spray nozzle,[9] plus the mop, yellow rubber gloves and “CAUTION WET FLOOR” sign that make up a rather large share of Paulo’s working life.[10][8] Staff wear a red-and-white striped shirt, an apron and a dark cap with the burger logo.[1] Even the cap has had a redesign over the years, trading its original pillbox shape for a yellow visor.[1][4]

The restaurant is part of a chain, and a second outlet operates inside the Comic convention venue.[11]

History

Burger-Tron: home of the Astro-Burger Deluxe and Paulo’s deeply glamorous part-time job.[12]

Paulo’s friends wander in after a study session and find him behind the counter in full uniform, greeting them with “Welcome to Burger-Tron, home of the Astro-Burger Deluxe.”[5][1] The shine wears off pretty quickly. Over the course of the visit he flirts a discount at Tess, weathers a customer’s ketchup-packet tirade, and ends up mopping in yellow gloves behind a vomiting child, his third puke clean-up of the day.[10]

The convention outlet gets some business from Paulo himself in Guest of Honor. He puts his 20% employee discount to use and surprises Daisy with a milkshake, and the resulting round of wiping ice cream off each other’s faces leaves them both blushing.[11][13]

One of the worst days of Abbey and Daisy’s relationship took place at the main restaurant, as shown in flashback in Golden Hour. Paulo, on shift at the time, quietly fixed the milkshake order Abbey had gotten wrong for Daisy, then couldn’t resist taunting him about it.[14] The argument that followed spiraled well past milkshakes. Abbey declared himself “too much of a FUCKING BURDEN” and accused Daisy of always taking Paulo’s side.[15] Daisy slapped him, and Abbey walked out of the restaurant alone.[16][17]

Paulo puts his heart and soul into another glamorous shift at Burger-Tron.[18]

In College Material, Daisy, Lucy, Jordan and Augustus stop in for post-SAT milkshakes at Daisy’s insistence.[3] Paulo serves them but waves off Daisy’s offers of tutoring, telling her, “You got cancers to cure. Not hopeless cases like me.”[19] While Paulo mops the empty floor, Miranda mentions that her dad’s company will be taking resumes over the summer, and that he could hang up the mop and put those people skills to real use.[20]

By Good Enough, James has joined the staff, and he has already noticed that Daisy drops by often enough during Paulo’s shifts to assume the two have “a little thing going on.”[9][21] Lovestruck, he serves Mike, Ellen and Chris and arranges a group trip to the movies, while Paulo quietly deflates beside him.[22] After close, Paulo hands Daisy a milkshake and admits to her, in a booth, both his crush on James and how worthless he has been feeling.[23]

In Rain Check, Lucy marches Daisy across the parking lot and up to the counter to make her face Paulo, milkshake pretext and all.[2] Paulo offers Daisy “the usual,” but she walks off to a booth without answering and breaks down over the fact that she loves him and can’t even look at him.[24][25] When she bolts out into the rain, Paulo drops his mop and gloves and runs after her.[26] The confession itself happens out on the rainy streets, but afterward the brand-new couple walks back into the restaurant together, past a very pleased Lucy.[27] Veronica has pointed to Lucy’s ambush here as an example of her benevolent manipulation.[28]

Paulo and Daisy’s first official date, a double date with Jordan and Tiff, brings them straight back.[29] Paulo jokes about the venue, and Daisy insists it’s actually pretty romantic.[29] By the time they reach the queue, he is fully on board: “This is where we fell in love~!”[30]

Employees

Miranda asks Paulo if he’s okay. He yelps and clutches the mop.[31]

The restaurant has had a small and shifting staff over the years.

  • Paulo works the counter from Small Fry onward, greeting customers and doing an awful lot of mopping.[1] He later trains new hires and boasts of a coming “Managing Supervisor” promotion.[32]
  • Miranda manages the restaurant and is pretty happy with Paulo’s work.[8][20]
  • James works the kitchen and counter, on staff since the May before Good Enough.[9][33]
  • Lauren is a coworker who dreads the graveyard shift.[23]

An unnamed pigtailed cat shares the counter with Paulo at his debut, and a coworker calls out “Paulo, vomit on table three!” in the Golden Hour flashback.[5][14]

Trivia

Daisy enjoys her perfect milkshake while Mike wonders whether Paulo spat in his.[34]
  • The menu keeps to the space theme, from the Astro-Burger Deluxe[1] and a drink called a Blasto[35] to the new Stardust burger that packs the place out during Paulo and Daisy’s date.[30]
  • In the debut chapter’s commentary, Paulo’s job is described as “Five years in the making,” and an early version of the idea had employee Paulo pestering Lucy at the counter rather than Tess.[1]
  • Not every Burger-Tron employee attends Roseville High. The staff mix is modeled on Veronica’s own time working at Subway, and James was originally placed at a private school so Paulo would have somewhere to hide his crush. Veronica later transferred him to Roseville High, which is how the crush stopped being a secret.[36]
  • The restaurant itself stays off panel between College Material and Good Enough, a stretch of about three publication years, even though the characters never stop bringing it up in the meantime.[37][21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 6
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 7
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 106: College Material, page 12
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chapter 106: College Material, page 13
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 5
  6. ↑ Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 10
  7. ↑ Chapter 106: College Material, page 18
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 106: College Material, page 16
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 1
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 9
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 16
  12. ↑ Chapter 106: College Material, page 13
  13. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 17
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 21
  15. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 23
  16. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 24
  17. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 26
  18. ↑ Chapter 106: College Material, page 16
  19. ↑ Chapter 106: College Material, page 14
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 106: College Material, page 17
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 7
  22. ↑ Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 2
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 5
  24. ↑ Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 9
  25. ↑ Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 12
  26. ↑ Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 18
  27. ↑ Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 38
  28. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s manipulative tendencies”. 2026-04-24.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 19
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 128: Made Fresh, page 21
  31. ↑ Chapter 106: College Material, page 18
  32. ↑ Chapter 97: After You, page 7
  33. ↑ Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 7
  34. ↑ Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 7
  35. ↑ Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 8
  36. ↑ “Ask response on James and the track team’s origins”. 2025-10-31.
  37. ↑ Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 9
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