Brighton & Hove has played a surprisingly important role in the evolution of Britain’s branded burger scene. Due in part to its proximity to London and its reputation as a proving ground for food concepts, the city has often been the first stop for ambitious burger operators looking to expand beyond the capital.
MEATliquor was the original pioneer, opening a large off-pitch outpost close to Brighton station in 2013. Five years later, Patty & Bun followed, choosing a prominent site in Brighton’s The Lanes for its first regional restaurant.
The seaside city is also the birthplace of Honest Burgers. Founders Tom Barton and Phil Eeles refined their recipes in a Brighton flat before the brand made its debut at the Brighton Food Festival in 2010. Today, Honest Burgers operates around 50 restaurants across the UK including – of course – one in Brighton.
It has produced its fair share of home-grown operators too. Founded in the mid-1970s, Grubbs cured many a late-night reveller of the munchies with its cheap and cheerful burgers (its triple Hawaiian with thousand island sauce is the stuff of local legend) before shutting up shop last year.
Fiercely retro regional chain Uncle Sam’s has been serving burgers in and around the city for nearly as long, having started out in the early 1980s.
As one would expect in a city of nearly 300,000 people, all the major US-born fast food burger players also have a presence, including more recent transatlantic arrivals Wendy’s and Five Guys (the latter has two locations).
It’s safe to say Brighton likes a burger, then. Perhaps that’s why the city also remains home to several former high-street heavyweights: Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Wimpy and Ed’s Easy Diner all continue to run apparently successful restaurants in Brighton & Hove, making the city something of a final stronghold for the previous generation of burger brands.
Competition has intensified over the past few years, with Burger & Lobster and Flat Iron (which majors on steak but also serves burgers) entering the fray. Partly because of this, but also due to wider structural challenges within their respective businesses, this year has seen both MEATliquor and Patty & Bun pull out of the city.
Going above and beyond
The seemingly ideally located corner site vacated by Patty & Bun is now home to another highly-rated London burger concept opening its first restaurant outside London. Burger & Beyond founders Tom Stock and Craig Povoas secured the Ship Street site in an off-market deal after keeping an eye on it for some time.
“We first looked at sites in Brighton a few years ago,” Stock explains. “We walked past the site and agreed that if it ever came up, we’d try and get it. We’re in the mix with a lot of good brands here. The Ivy, Pizza Pilgrims and Flat Iron are moments away from us.”
Like many of their competitors in the burger space, Stock and Povas started out as street food operators. Povoaslaunched Burger & Beyond in the Essex town of Braintree in 2015, with Stock joining shortly afterwards to help run the business.
A lot of international burger brands have come to the UK but not many British-born burger brands have been successfully exported.
Neither had prior hospitality experience: Povas was a lift engineer, while Stock was a hydraulic engineer (he continues to run a business repairing plant machinery). Both, however, shared a passion for food.
“We were actually introduced through Craig’s butcher at the time, who happened to be one of my best mates,” says Stock. He helped Povoas– the chef behind the operation, albeit entirely self-taught – bring his burgers to London, trading at some of the leading street food venues of the era including KERB and Street Feast.
Having built a name on London’s then-booming street food scene, the pair opened their first full-service restaurant in Shoreditch in 2018.
Since then, they have gradually moved away from their street food roots, opening restaurants in Soho and at Borough Yards near London Bridge, alongside five food hall counters in London and another at recently launched Manchester venture House of Social.
“Street food was good, but the golden era is over,” says Stock. “It was always the aim to do restaurants. We want to have control over the whole experience.
“That said, the food hall sites have helped us because they get our name out there, are great for cashflow and require a much lower investment than our full-service restaurants.”
A smoother launch
Alongside its enviable location, a major appeal of the Brighton site was that it was already configured as a burger restaurant, with the necessary kitchen setup and - crucially - extraction in place. This meant a considerably smaller investment than Burger & Beyond’s two most recent London openings, which both launched in 2022.
While those restaurants have gone on to become major successes, their near simultaneous openings initially placed considerable operational and financial strain on the business.
“It wasn’t the plan to launch Soho and Borough so close together, but inevitably one ended up being late and one ended up being early. The Brighton opening so far feels much smoother; we’re much more ready for it,” Stock says.
Changes to the 60-cover site have been extensive but largely cosmetic. The biggest alteration is the removal of the open kitchen.
“We don’t like to have open kitchens in our sites. There’s not much theatre to making burgers really,” Stock says.
Street food was good, but the golden era is over. We want to have control over the whole experience.
Because Patty & Bun had let its Brighton team go before the deal was completed, Burger & Beyond did not inherit the staff, although a handful of former employees from the site have since joined the new operation, which officially launches later this week.
Anecdotally, Patty & Bun’s South Coast outpost struggled despite its enviable pitch, with the brand finding it difficult to crack Brighton’s softer early-week trade and facing increasing competition from nearby operators. The arrival of Burger & Lobster and Flat Iron may well have been the last straw.
Clearly, Stock and Povas believe they have what it takes to succeed in what could be considered a challenging spot for a burger restaurant.
“There is a gap in the market for us. I fancy our chances against the other burger players around here,” Stock says.
Fighting talk, but Stock’s bravado is backed up by Burger & Beyond’s reputation on the burger scene: the brand was recently named the best burger in the UK by respected food review collective The Burger Dudes and has featured in numerous other best burger lists.
Coming out on top of the bunfight
Made with what the brand describes as a ‘relentless focus on quality’, the burgers use rare breed beef sourced by Nemanja Borjanovic’s Mr Txuleta meat supply business, which supplies some of the best restaurants in the capital.
“Our burgers are quite rich on account of the high-quality, well-aged meat. As such, our approach is quite traditional, we try not to do too much to it, and we don’t do gimmicks. People are sticking all sorts on top of burgers these days.”
Made with a combination of chuck, rib cap, brisket and short rib all aged for at least 40 days, the burgers are pressed onto the grill rather than smashed, resulting in a thicker patty that sits somewhere between a traditional pre-shaped burger and a smashburger.
“Our meat starts out as a ball but we’re more gentle with it. When you smash a patty hard you get nice caramelisation, but the final product can be quite dry,” says Stock, who believes that aggressive smashing is not the best way of showcasing very high-quality beef.
“I’m not saying that all these new smashburger players are using bad-quality beef, but if you have average meat, you can smash it and get away with it. Smashing is not right for us because you do lose some of the flavour of the beef.”
Burgers start at £12.50 for a single cheeseburger (without fries) but the brand’s more premium burgers cost well north of that, with Burger & Beyond’s famed Bougie Burger (two standard patties, double American cheese, steak sauce, ‘marrownaise’ and beef fat onions) and purist favourite Le Big Boeuf (a single 200g patty cooked in beef tallow, double American cheese, confit onions) priced at £22 and £18 respectively.
Stock is aware that this is a considerably higher price point than most of his competitors but believes that the quality of the product and, just as importantly, the environment in which it is served justify it.
A ‘nice restaurant that specialises in burgers’
Unlike most burger brands, Burger & Beyond’s restaurants are not modelled on a US burger bar, diner or dive bar.
In fact, you’d probably never guess the restaurants majored in burgers were it not for the branding and the heady aroma of sizzling beef. This elevated positioning is further underscored by the fact that – very unusually for a restaurant nominally focused on burgers – Burger & Beyond also sells top-quality steaks, which are sourced from Mr Txuleta.
“We don’t sell ourselves as a burger joint. We’re a nice restaurant that specialises in burgers,” says Stock, who sees Flat Iron – which is opposite his new Brighton location – as a more direct competitor than Honest Burgers, which is also very close by.
We don’t do gimmicks. People are sticking all sorts on top of burgers these days
At the same time, he acknowledges that selling burgers at a considerably higher price than the majority of his competitors is not without its challenges.
“Burgers are a price-sensitive market. The difference between say £12 and £15 is significant. We have to battle the fact that some people see it as ‘just’ a burger. We are also aware that eating out is expensive.”
With that in mind, Burger & Beyond offers a lunch deal and recently introduced a kid’s menu.
Steady expansion plans
Over the past few years, the margin has taken a hit, but Burger & Beyond’s underlying business model remains solid. As such, more expansion will soon come, but the pair are taking a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach.
“We want to open locations across the UK, but we have no investors, so we need to be careful. Medium term I can see us doing a few more in London and some more in the regions. Manchester would be an obvious choice as we already have a presence there, but we’re also interested in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Bristol.”
Surprisingly, given they have only recently opened their first restaurant outside London, Burger & Beyond has already started to explore international franchising. Stock and Povas apparently went quite far down the road with an overseas partner, but the deal ultimately didn’t go ahead.
“We are still working on it. A lot of international burger brands have come to the UK but not many British-born burger brands have been successfully exported.
“We have done a lot of research trips to the US, and we believe our burger stands up against anything we have tried there. We honestly think we serve the best burger in the world.”