BY KEELIN EVERLY-LANG for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 7/3/2026
Drive by the Holiday Inn in the Hosmer district of Tacoma, and you’d never guess a viral burger restaurant is hidden inside.
The Secret Burger Kitchen opened in 2024 inside the hotel at 8402 S. Hosmer St. and is advertised outside by only a small sandwich board near the front entrance.
Those active on social media might recognize the smash burgers, secret sauce syringes, and colorful milkshakes from videos that have gained traction for the restaurant.
Inside, guests can order through touchscreen menus or with cashiers at the front and select from a variety of customizable options. Guests can remix anything on the menu, including the burgers, wings, and shakes.
“Every time you eat here it can be a little different,” Franchisee Success Director Shay Pate told the Weekly Volcano.
Guests can choose the seasoning on the burger itself from options including the Secret Burger Kitchen or Maharaji seasoning, the type of bun, and extras like a fried egg, bacon, peppers including jalapeños, serranos, or habaneros, and, of course, a flavor injector.
The flavor injectors are large syringes holding 2 ounces of sauce that can be used to add flavors inside your burger, drizzled over fries or wings, or however you desire.
Customizable options even include plant-based and gluten-free choices.
Flavor options include Secret Burger Kitchen sauce, garlic, hot honey, Caribbean jerk, buffalo, and ranch.
All this can be accompanied by one of the restaurant’s blended shakes topped with various sweet breakfast cereals, or soda options like the Pink Bling Secret Soda or It Was All a Dream.
Pate is also the general manager of the overall hotel campus. Her favorite burger is the double smash with jalapeños and grilled onions.
Being located in a hotel means the flagship location has long open hours, from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and opening at 7:30 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Secret Burger Kitchen’s first standalone brick-and-mortar restaurant opened in 2025, and a new location is opening in Kirkland next month. A fourth location is planned to open in Renton in October of this year.
These other locations are much less hidden, with plenty of signage to draw in the crowds, but are open more typical hours for this type of restaurant, from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Back in 2024, the hotel’s former restaurant “wasn’t as popular,” Pate said, so the team added the smash burger concept and looked for more unique attributes to offer.
Several of the flavors come from owner Paul Sandhu’s Punjabi heritage, Pate said, which adds unique combinations.
“Being rooted in hospitality, guest experience is huge for us. We want families to come in and not just sit down and eat, we want you to have a fun experience, we want you to post on social media, and you know, have fun and hype it up. So that’s where that came from, is elevating the guest experience,” Pate said.
“For a long time, years ago, people would go to hotels for experiences and for the restaurants, and then it wasn’t like that for a very long time, but now we get a lot of traction here,” Pate said.
Not only does the restaurant now bring people to the hotel, but it also “brings people back to our community here at Hosmer, as well,” Pate said.
As a member of the Hosmer Business Association, Pate said this is important to her.
“I really want people to understand how far we’ve come here on Hosmer … we’re really working to make the corridor safer and more welcoming. Our role is to create a place people want to visit, bring your friends to, and feel good about supporting,” Pate said.
The hotel is also the former location of Nate Jackson’s Super Funny Comedy Club, which is now located in downtown Tacoma.
To bring back some fun activities and experiences for guests, the hotel will be opening an arcade with 42 games next month, as well as an 11-hole blacklight mini golf course called Vibe Golf.
This article paid for by the Hosmer Business District.
