The original concept was going to be called Gigantic Organic. Really, the decision point was "Can this person supply me with large quantities." Initially I reached out to small ranchers, and they just didn't have the capability! I had to figure out who can supply me and who can do it in a way that meets my standards and the ethos of the company. To do it with any kind of scale, you can't go to one rancher with a few hundred acres. But it's processed through large beef processors. Our beef comes from four different ranchers out in Nebraska and Colorado. A lot of the large beef companies have divisions of all natural and organic beef. Some buzzwords are missing - the beef isn't grass fed, and it's not "local."Ĭ: Tell us why you chose that "level" of sustainable meat?ĭF: The large beef producers are becoming savvy enough to realize that this is where the market is going, and that they need to get into it. And I thought that as people become more aware of how their food is raised and processed, they would welcome Epic.Įpic Burger uses all-natural beef, humanely raised, without hormones and antibiotics. When I looked at the large players, nobody was providing high-integrity food. That's why I chose to go with a really simple menu, focused, very few moving parts, in order to have a concept that I could easily scale up. What I wanted to do was introduce a better burger on a large scale. I love everybody's different take on the burger. I thought it was such an iconic food item. When I looked around the landscape, I saw an opportunity to bring all-natural foods to a bigger audience.ĭF: That's really the big idea around Epic, to introduce people to affordable all-natural foods through a familiar product. A lot of the food I was producing was low-end processed food that I wouldn't consume myself and couldn't be particularly proud of. As a chef, that started to not feel great to me. Then I migrated towards product development and food manufacturing, and that's where I got to learn about industrialized food. We sat down with David Friedman, founder and owner of Epic Burger, to learn about what he is doing to change what the American burger shop looks like.Ĭhicagoist: Why open a sustainable small business? Why is it worth the trouble.ĭF: I'm a chef by trade, and I worked as a chef in high-end restaurants. A shining local example of this is Epic Burger, the local burger chain that makes sustainable sourcing so central, it's on the first sign you see when you walk in the door. Businesses with multiple locations and thousands of customers, at all different levels of cost, must find ways to make sustainability pay. It's all well and good for a fancy restaurant to buy a few ingredients from a local farmer, but in order for sustainability to stick, it has to be scaled up. In this new series, we talk with small business owners that are combining their buying power with their principles to make a difference in the world. Small Business, Big Impact: Epic Burger By Anthony Todd in Food on 4:00PM
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