You’ve just come back from the World Food Championships in Indianapolis. How did you get on?
We came fourth out of about 50 competitors from across the US as well as countries including Dubai, Korea, France, Japan, and South Africa (Dubai claimed victory) and won the Judge’s Choice Award.
What was your entry?
This year the opening round was on the theme of extreme burgers. The judges wanted people to use luxurious ingredients, but we wanted to serve a simple dirty cheeseburger, so we took the Dirty Boy burger from our menu and elevated it by putting black truffle in our dirty mayo and changing the beef dripping onions to those made with bone marrow and miso and calling it the Bouje Boy. We also used gherkins that used champagne as part of the pickling liquor and the beef patty was dry-aged, grass-fed USDA prime rib and then we stuck some really cheap US cheese on top. Our philosophy is to just put up a good honest cheeseburger with good ingredients. A lot of the competitors go nuts and use it as a chance to show how many techniques they can get into one burger, but we don’t. I’ve judged burger competitions, and I know all I want is a good cheeseburger, but the US tastebuds are different.
You’ve entered the awards a number of times…
The awards marked the 10-year anniversary of us first going over to Las Vegas to compete in 2014. Every time you come in the top 10 you get invited back the following year, so we just kept coming back. The last time we went over was in 2019 – Covid hit in 2020, and the business was ramping up, so we thought we’d knock it on the head for a bit. The next time we competed was in 2023 when we won The National Burger Awards (in the UK) and the World Food Championships invited us back this year on the back of that.
How did The Beefy Boys come about?
It was a complete accident. It started off back in 2011 as a BBQ in back garden for a laugh. My friend Dan [Mayo-Evans, co-founder) called me up because he was having a BBQ, knew I was into food and wanted me to help do it. We did a lot of research online and watching programmes like Man Vs Food because back then burgers were generally terrible, and we wanted to do something better. We then did Grillstock’s King of the Grill competition as Dan had had a bottle of wine and entered us and won Best Burger and so we then got entered into the World Food Championships where we came second. After that we realised that we had to take it seriously. From there we opened our first restaurant in Hereford (in 2015) followed by others in Shrewsbury (2021) and Cheltenham (2023), and we also have two food trucks.
You have 20 different burgers on your menu. Why so many?
We look at our menu like we do our children, it’s hard to have favourites and they all have their fan base. We do love a classic cheeseburger but there are a few stunt burgers and concept ones, such as Pizza Boy (patties with breaded mozzarella, garlic herb dip, marinara sauce, pepperoni, red onion, and Swiss cheese) and Pastrami Boy. Our USP is that we offer four patty styles – thick, two smashed patties, Oklahoma style (smashed with onion), and animal style (fried with American mustard). The most popular these days its smashed, which make up about 70% of orders – it has probably been that way for the past few years. Smashed patties have taken over.
What’s behind the rise of the smashed patty?
One thing is that they eat really nicely. A thicker patty has to be cooked pink, and some people are squeamish about it. You also have to jump through a lot of safety hoops to make it happen. The good thing about smashed burgers is you get two patties so double the Maillard reaction than a thick burger, and you have that crust and umami flavour that customers love. Another reason that they have become so popular is that it’s pretty easy to train somebody how to smash a patty – it’s easy to get it wrong and dry it out but if you muck it up you can cook another one in a minute and a half and get it out in a restaurant. From an operator’s perspective it’s a lot easier to do and to a high standard. It also makes for good Instagram videos because you see the process from beginning to end very easily.
Are smashed patties here to stay?
The Oklahoma smashed patty is far superior to a smashed patty in my opinion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the next fad. But the burger world just goes in fads. You go back to before 2017, and it was all about pink burgers. It will go the other way soon and the thick patty might make a return.
You have three restaurants. Do you plan to open more?
We are opening a fourth site and are just waiting to sign the lease. We want to grow as a company, but we don’t want to do what we’ve seen some operators do, which is grow and muck it up and collapse. Our plan is to stupid and try and open 50 sites. All our meat comes from one farm in Hereford, so we plan to expand and maintain that quality and supply, which could mean a couple of new restaurants a year for the next few years. If we don’t find the right sites we won’t do it. We are looking at two and a half hours from Hereford so we can get there within a reasonable time.
What size sites are you looking for?
Hereford is a monster. It’s 220 covers because we extended into the Frankie and Benny’s next door during Covid and realised we could keep it and fill it, but we will never do anything so big again. The only reason it works is because it has a hometown crowd. Shrewsbury was the second one we did and is our smallest site (80 covers) in case we buggered it up and Cheltenham is 160 covers. The new restaurant will have 120 covers, and 120-150 cover sites are what we are looking for in general, although if we found another smaller site like Shrewsbury, we’d look at it.
Do you plan to enter more competitions?
They are a lot of hard work and stress and time away from the business and our kids. We would never say never but would probably enjoy more just going over to America on our own. A road trip based on the history of the burger would be loads of