HOW DOES A FRIED CHICKEN SHOP END UP COMPETING AT THE NATIONAL BURGER AWARDS 2023?
A little over 8 years ago, I was tugging my streetfood wagon (a mobile surf shack to be exact) around the Mid Devon countryside and afar, looking for ways to diversify my menu with something new and exciting.
Looking around my wagon, I had 4 massive chip shop style fryers and it dawned on me that I could create something unreal with them. I could create the best fried chicken you’d ever had and who doesn’t LOVE fried chicken? The world of mind blowing flavours that opened up to me was immensely exciting.
Creative juices started flowing, tasting sessions got serious, and I suddenly had a section of the menu dedicated to the golden fried pieces of joy.
I started selling a few here and there on my weekly stops but after a while, they REALLY blew up. The word had spread about these incredible burgers and I was suddenly peddling nearly 100 of them a day.
Around the same time, high street burger joints were really blowing up. The burger revolution was here and everyone had found the best place to get one.
Each place with their own take on what a burger “should” look and taste like.
Each brand essentially serving the same thing but trying to find their point of difference in what was becoming a very crowded marketplace.
In fact a blind taste test probably wouldn’t have been able to tell most of them apart.
I remember going to one of these high street burger joints and looking at their amazing beef combinations. I’d probably eaten approximately 479 burgers at various places at this point and wanted to try something different.
As I scanned the outer reaches of the menu, I thought, “I wonder what their chicken burger’s like? I wonder how it compares to mine?”.
There it was; sad, unimaginative, no inspiration, cast away off into a corner of the menu with maybe just lettuce, tomato and mayo.
How boring.
I knew I could, and was, doing much better than these particularly drab excuses.
So I set out on a journey.
My dream was to create a burger joint that specialises in fried chicken but wouldn’t be scared to serve beef burgers too.
And to top that off, the beef burgers will be as good, if not better than the fried chicken that sat front and centre.
Somewhere that flips your understanding of the “usual” burger joint and carves its own path.
There are very set rules in the burger world;
A burger can only contain beef. Anything else is some form of “sandwich”.
Burger joints must specialise in beef.
Absolutely no effort must be made making the chicken offering interesting or exciting.
There are very set rules in the chicken shop world too;
Fried chicken shops must only serve fried chicken. (And maybe some token vegan/veggie options)
Chicken shops must be counter service and have awkward plastic tables
A chicken shop must be open after club kick out
Chicken shops must sell whole pieces of chicken in buckets
Chicken shops must cook all of their chicken at the beginning of the shift and keep it in the warming cabinet
Chicken shop names must follow the format of “(town name) fried chicken” or “(owner’s name) fried chicken”
We don’t give a fuck about the rules.
Sometimes in this world, things come along that are new or subversions of what you already know and that creates confusion. You try and label it with what you already know or put it in a box that fits what you already think you know, but in doing so you don’t accept it or understand it for what it really is.
Are we a chicken shop? No. Are we a burger joint? 100% yes. We just happen to be a burger joint that specialises in fried chicken. A burger joint that also cares enough about EVERYTHING that we sell to make sure that we’re the top of our game whichever corner of the menu you look at.
And that’s how we ended up with one of our beef burgers competing at the National Burger awards.