Food truck partnerships expected to continue in Burger Battles to come, organizers say

The 11th annual Downtown Burger Battle may be over, but Downtown Sioux Falls representatives say the trend of brick-and-mortar restaurants partnering with food trucks for the battle is seeing good results and will only continue.

The burger battle first had food trucks appear last year, when two food trucks participated. The first was Covert Artisan Ales & Cellars that partnered with the Windy City Bites food truck, and the second was Glacial Lakes Distillery and Brewhouse, which partnered with the food truck FadeAway.

This year, three new food trucks joined the battle, bringing a diverse range of flavors to the traditional American burger palette.

Glacial Lakes Distillery partnered with Cheezy Noodle to create the “Queso-Birria Burger.” Severance Brewing Company partnered with Rudy Navarrete’s Taco Bus to create “The Spice is Right,” a burger with Tex-Mex flair. And finally, Woodgrain Brewing Company partnered with Southern Perfection BBQ to create the “Smokehouse Brisket Cabernet Burger.”

How did food trucks participating in the battle come about?

The trend's starting point started with conversations involving officials from downtown restaurants that didn’t have industrial kitchens but were members with Downton Sioux Falls who wanted to take part in the battle, DTSF Event Coordinator Jared Indahl said. That led to such partnerships to help create a burger that could be entered into the contest, he said.

The first brick-and-mortar restaurant to have the idea was Covert Artisan Ales & Cellars for a partnership with Windy City Bites, Indahl said. Windy City Bites was already a member, which made the process easy.

Indahl said a lot of food trucks are also members and take part in DTSF events, for which they are given discounted rates and benefits. The membership was an important part of the process to start featuring food trucks in the battle.

So, when this idea came about, DTSF representatives tried to help their members out by doing events and promotions throughout the calendar year and didn’t want to say no to participation in competitions, he said.

How did the food truck owners create their burgers for this year?

Christopher Glover, the co-owner of Southern Perfection BBQ, said this was an amazing opportunity to support the community and to “have something fun to do during these winter months, when there’s not a lot going on.”

He said it was a way for the community find out how multifaceted their business is and how they can do a whole lot more on top of being a through-and-through barbeque restaurant.

“We can get some creativity going, and it’s only going to push everyone to be more creative and really hone in on different recipes,” Christopher said. “The Burger Battle has evolved to be a really big deal, and it’s mainly because of the offerings and (that) people begin to get more creative.”

Joanna Glover, co-owner of the truck and Christopher's spouse, said the process of creating this year’s burger was done right in their backyard around a campfire with their kids, using the extra brisket trimmings they had leftover from their day-to-day regular briskets.

“Our brisket that we do on a regular basis is a Texas-style brisket, with all the heavy seasonings. And this burger is pretty much the same thing,” Joanna said about this year's creation. “The extra razzle-dazzle was the cheese sauce, primarily because, we just love cheese.”

The truck's signature southern-style cooking and flavors wasn’t featured as much in this burger, but the couple said they are looking forward to future years to do that.

“I feel like we could really incorporate our heritage and our home into a burger,” Joanna said. “We could definitely create something in the future that screams Georgia Southern.”

Rudy Navarrete, with Rudy Navarrete’s Taco Bus, created a burger he said was “definitely not a traditional burger.” one he said he tried to make as a representation of what he does at his food truck. The burger, an adaptation of a dish on his menu called “Rudy’s Special,” is all about the Tex-Mex (Texas-Mexican) flavors.

The burger meat was seasoned in the same way as taco meat and topped with enchilada sauce or chili gravy, along with a crunchy taco flower, cheddar and jalapeno sour cream. This was then served with cider chips and hot sauce, which is basically their salsa, Navarrete said.

Husband and wife Ravuth “Johnny” Tahn and Jessica Eck, of the Cheezy Noodle food truck, had a similar process to Navarrete’s for this year’s Battle burger. The idea was to incorporate their signature Birria mac-and-cheese dish from their regular menu and create a burger with that as the foundation, said Tahn.

“Birria is Mexican slow-cooked beef (and) it’s most commonly used in tacos,” Eck said. “We use that on our macaroni and cheese as one of our toppings.”

What have people said about these burgers?

The “Smokehouse Brisket and Cabernet Burger” has received a lot of “great high remarks,” Christopher said. He said the biggest focus was on the combination of the Cabernet cheese sauce, and their own house-made burger sauce, along with the burger patty itself. There’s a lot of seasonings and a lot of pepper on the burger itself, which led to a lot of positive feedback.

The overall feedback for the “Queso-Birria Burger” has also been “really good,” Eck said. She said lots of feedback from different types of people helped them tweak their preparation of the burger over the weeks of the battle.

The one worry Eck talked about was the presentation part of the burger, which is more of a challenge since they are not serving out a restaurant but operating out of their Cheezy Noodle food truck. They have to “unfortunately use takeout containers” as that is the “easiest and most efficient way to get food from the truck into the restaurant.”

Navarrete said one of the most liked elements in the Tex-Mex “Spice is Right” burger is the crunch that comes in with the taco flower, since traditional American burgers don’t have that and this “sets it apart.” Most people like the “tasty” Tex-Mex flavors, he said.

What does the future of burger battle look like?

Not only have last couple of years seen an increase in the total number of food trucks participating, but the amount of burgers sold, the number of participants and the number of votes as well, Indahl said. He said every year of the Burger Battle is about how they can beat the previous year, with this year seeing 37 competitors compared with last year's 32.

Last year's battle saw more than 57,573 burger sales with an economic impact of $1,747,340, according to final numbers shared by DTSF Wednesday. The final tallies show that this year's burger battle beat those numbers with a total of 76,534 burgers sold with an economic impact of $2,914,414 as estimated from the Arts and Economic Prosperity Study.

Last year's battle showed that Sioux Falls residents spent $909,971 on burgers for the battle, with this year going above that with $1,234,277 spent, according to DTSF. They also counted a total of 32,692 votes for burgers this year in comparison with last year showing a total of 24,198 votes.

"As long as we see people coming out and supporting our restaurants, businesses and downtown, that's what we want to see (and what) our goal is," Indahl said.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Burger battle food trucks reflect on this year's event