Honest Burgers sets up its own butchery to give it patty power

From this week, five of its London restaurants, in Brixton, Clapham, Tooting, Peckham and Greenwich, will be serving burgers made with the new patties.

Tom Barton, co-founder of the 24-strong burger restaurant, believes the burger brand will be among the first in Europe to make its own patties rather than buy them in made to spec.

“We are not shy of making stuff ourselves,” he says. “We decided we wanted to give it a go ourselves.”

The meat in the burgers will remain the same, but rather than patties being sent to the company pre-made, it will instead buy the beef in cuts of chuck and rib cap and mince them itself.

Barton says there are currently only a handful of UK suppliers that are approved to supply burgers that are intended to be eaten rare - known as less than thoroughly cooked (LTTC) - and that he had to go through a lot of red tape to gain LTTC accreditation for the Honest Butchery. The butchery has been granted three-month temporary accreditation, which can be extended.

The company will roll out the patties to a further five or six restaurants each week with all of its restaurants serving them by the third week in January. When fully up and running, the butchery will produce more than 42,000 patties each week.