Getting ready for summer

It's been a while since we blogged... Looking back the last few months I see that we have made a lot of changes!

No more high fructose corn syrup!
From the start we knew that HFCS is no good but we were just unable to buy good ketchup in bulk from our suppliers.  So now we make our own!  Yes, it cost us more and it takes work making it but it is just the right thing to do not to serve our guests HFCS when we can provide a healthier alternative.  We have beta tested our own brand of BUNS ketchup and you liked it!  Who knows?  Maybe we will make more and sell them in bottles?  Watch out Heinz!

Sorry diet drinks and can sodas...
Along that same line, we have improved on our beverage lineup to only natural products: Lightly carbonated orange and lemon sodas from San Pellegrino; Juice Squeeze; Dry Sodas, and Mexican Cokes because it is made from real cane sugar!

Beecher's we love you

Taking in our guests' feedback, we now feature Beecher's Flagship cheese on all of our cheeseburgers.  There is simply nothing better.

The Hottie is OUT!

Hottie and BUNS are two words that belong together (but you probably don’t want to google them as such ;)  We beta-tested our spicy burger and it got rave reviews.  So it is an official menu item: our delicious grass-fed patty topped with pepper jack cheese, garnished with fire-roasted green chili, lettuce, tomato, onion and dressed with our homemade chipotle mayo.  After all, who can resist a hottie?

Summer locations

Well so it is now June (and it actually stopped snowing last night).  BUNS, along with a number of our food truck colleagues, will be vending from 2^nd and Pine in downtown Seattle (http://2ndAndPine.com ), we will be at the Queen Anne Farmer’s Market on Thursday afternoons, and on Capitol Hill Saturday late nights (http://CapHillNightMarket.com ).

SUNSET liked us!!

Check out the June issue of Sunset Magazine.  BUNS is one of 3 (and the only food truck) picked by Sunset's editors as “Seattle’s Burger Kings”!  We are jazzed and honored.  Thank you Sunset!

Online ordering is here!

One of the challenges we face doing gourmet burgers is the wait time for the patty to cook.  Unlike something that you just scoop and serve, we cook our food to order and it does take about 10 to 12 minutes to cook a raw patty to medium well.  That is a long time to wait when people relate food trucks to fast foods and are used to the McDonalds way.  And it SEEMS even longer when it is cold and miserable outdoor.

So we have been working on an online order solution since we started and it is finally up and running!  Now you can be sitting at your desk, or in your car, place the order, and do a quick dash to pick up your food all ready for you.

The order page can be accessed through our web site or a simple URL to remember: OrderBuns.com

Give that a try next time we are in your neighborhood!

Winter calendar

We had a mild Fall but Winter is finally here.  We are now on our Winter calendar with a reduced operating schedule.  Reasons?

1. Despite of the heat lamp we carry around, you are cold and we are cold.  The patronage, understandably drops and we simply do not sell enough burgers to justify operations when it is cold and miserable.
2. We use this time to gear up for the spring and summer, test new recipes and try new things.
3. Hey, when else do we go skiing?

We will still be catering and doing special events.  And vending (as before) perhaps once a week just to keep the broiler hot.  So please come to the location and see us when your craving kicks in! 

Free burgers and ice cream day!

We talked about this and we decided that in lieu of a christmas party, we would do something for the community instead.  So yesterday we took the Bunsmobile down to the Crown Lutheran Church in Ballard and helped out the Phinney Neighborhood Association's soup kitchen program by serving free burgers to those in need.

We shared the idea with Molly Moon so Leo (their truck) came along and served free cream.  Molly herself was there scooping up their amazing ice cream.  Hmmm...Burgers from BUNS and ice cream from Molly Moon... that's practically food porn. 

We served about 100 burgers.  From what we can tell, the guests enjoyed the great food.  But we almost created a riot in the dining hall because some guests were a bit impatient to wait for their turns.  All was good everyone got burger and ice cream. 

So there was no riot and you did not hear about this on the news because we made a point NOT to send press releases around ahead of time and dilute our sincere intent.  Diane Sawyer was not there, neither was Katie Couric.  We are ok with that.

Our staff donated their time for the event.  Corfini Gourmet donated fresh, natural ground beef from Painted Hills.  Grand Central donated the buns.  Thank you Alden, Matt, Lauren, Eli, Dave, Ira (and the girls)!  And of course, Molly and Kendall.

We had a good experience and we think we will do this from time to time through the year.  Molly and I were thinking maybe in the summer when it is not so efing cold and miserable.  Who knows?  Maybe we will start a new trend and get more of us mobile food people to do this sort of things?   

Thank you Molly!

We are SO jazzed about next Monday - Molly Moon's company Christmas party!  We have worked side-by-side with Leo (Molly's ice cream truck) from time to time through the last few months and honored to be selected to cater their company party!

the Ferrari

For a while now I have been using this awesome balsamic glaze on my steaks and chicken at home.  So it is time we apply it to our (already great) burgers, we created a new burger we call "the Ferrari" and it is EPIC!  Our guests who tried it LOVED it!

The glaze is bottled and imported by our good friends Frank and Janet Mandarano.  The Mandarano Glaze and Sauce is a premium balsamic reduction made from an award-winning Modena family recipe.  Frank bottled and imported them from Modena, Italy (the birthplace of Ferrari). 

For those of you who enjoys fast driving machines, Frank also runs the Car Guy Tour.  Hmmm... nothing better than sucking on a bottle of Frank's balsamic glaze while going 140 mph on the autostrada LOL

Still a noob... but learning everyday

We started operations back in August 2010.  In the few months we have been operating, we have learned a hell of a lot.  These are some of the changes or improvement we have made:

The beef
We started with fresh, 100% natural, grass-fed beef from Thundering Hooves in Walla Walla and that has not changed.  We did change out our charbroiler to one that puts out more heat to give our patties more of that charbroiled taste.  It also reduced cooking time.

Our French fries
We know we have the best French fries in town because we use the best product fried in premium soybean oil.  To out-do ourselves we now toss them with truffle oil that makes them even better!  Customers have been asking about poutine, so that is in the test kitchen right now.  Like everything we do, we want to do it right, so we will make them as genuine Quebecoise as we can!

The Birdy and the Sammy
Responding to customers' requests we are adding a chicken and a salmon burger to our menu.  The Birdy is built with a natural chicken fillet topped with strips of applewood smoked bacon.  The Sammy has a 5-oz patty made from wild-caught Alaska salmon.  Yummy!!

Veggie option
Again listening to our customers we are now able to substitute any of our burgers with a veggie patty.  The patty is an Amy's 1/4 lb veggie patty.  Made with organic vegetables and grains, it has no transfat or msg.

http://www.amys.com/products/product_view.php?id=282

The Weather
Winter is here but we are still out there serving.  For the wet days we have our giant awning deployed to keep you dry.  We also carry a patio heat lamp to keep you warm.

You talk, we listen.