If you’re looking for an excuse not to cook dinner this week, restaurants in the Greater Moncton area have 54 different reasons for you to hang up your apron.
Helping kick off the new year is the annual Flip Burger Fest, which features 54 never-seen-on-the-menu-before burgers.
“Our burger this year is called ‘When in Roma,’” said Cheers Beverage Room owner Jennifer Somers.
“We’ve created a tomato jam made from Roma tomatoes with some marinated red onions and balsamic, thick cut mozzarella and a homemade garlic mayonnaise.”
At Cheers, staff hold a burger-off in October to try and figure out exactly which burger they will enter in the festival. It includes blind-tasting from regular customers and other staff members until they’re able to narrow down a favourite.
With a wide variety of unique, one-of-a-kind options, there’s bound to be something for everyone from beef to chicken to even dessert burgers on this year’s list.
“This year the guys put on the ‘Smokey Chipotle Bacon’ burger,” said Igloo Beverage Room catering manager Tim Worden.
“It’s a six-ounce patty. They use a homemade chipotle sauce. They take onions, they marinate them in hot sauce and then they bread them and deep fry them so you get a nice crunch and then we use a smoke cheddar cheese that we slice in house.”
Worden says the “Smokey Chipotle Bacon” burger is actually hand-picked from the owner and his son, Adam Worden, based on his personal tastes and what he thinks fits the restaurant best.
At the heart of the festival is creative freedom, ambitious goals for customers looking to try them all and, of course, tasty burgers, but there’s something bigger happening behind the scenes as well.
Restaurant owners say the festival provides a 17-day boost through one of the slowest months of the year.
“It definitely has an impact on our business in January,” said Somers. “We are averaging right now between 500-600 burgers a week, which is pretty awesome.”
She says that Cheers have been a part of Burger Fest since the very beginning and will continue to participate as long as it’s happening, noting it’s the festival they look forward to the most each and every year.
“If Burger Fest wouldn’t have been happening in 2021, I don’t know if we would have even opened for take out where everything that year was burger. Burgers, burgers, burgers, we sold hundreds of burgers, hundreds every week, so yeah, Burger Fest is near and dear to our hearts.”
At Igloo Beverage Room, Worden says they’re starting to see customers come back for a second round before the burger disappears off the menu again.
“It’s a big boost to the business,” he said. “I would say our food sales probably double during that two-week period. As far as volume goes, it’s up and down, but it averages about 150 a day and then I’m not including what goes through take out and skip the dishes.”
Worden says the entire festival, although it only runs from Jan. 12 to 28, has a ripple effect.
“In January, you need whatever you can to get the people out and moving and when we have a crowd, it makes a crowd and people don’t just order burgers, we sell way more appetizers, way more beverages, so it’s a very, very big success for us.”
Atlantic Beef Products president Russ Mallard said festivals like this are a win-win for both the beef and restaurant industry.
“By and large the tourist season is the summer so anything you can do to try and help restaurants this time of year, get people into their restaurants, it’s a good thing and we also like when they happen to feature beef items,” he said, noting that basing it around burgers is a really effective idea, which is seen through different burger festivals across the Atlantic provinces including a new one that will be rolled out in February with Irving Big Stops and food banks.
“I do think it does actually help drive business into restaurants and I think people are looking for something to do,” he said. “The burger is such a flexible item that there’s so many different things you can do, you can have so many different great serving of burgers that you can literally visit a different burger place every couple of days and have a different experience, you know?”
Flip Burger Fest customers are encouraged to share their experience on social media.
