Novemburger raises almost $7,000 for United Way
- Dev Team
- 17 Dec 2014
After 30 days, 31 restaurants and unique burgers, and over a thousand votes cast, urbanicity Omnimedia announced the winners of the month-long burger festival, Novemburger, at their offices on Tuesday.
The winner for most burgers sold was the Brassie Pub located on Wilson Street in Ancaster who sold 672 burgers throughout the month.
The highly competitive prize for Novemburger of the Year went to Rapscallion Rogue Eatery on Young Street for their creation, the Dirty Burger, which featured a ground duck patty topped with herbed goat cheese, pickled & candied onions, spinach, and more.
You can find each burger and their full ingredients at novemburger.ca
The festival wasn’t just to get people to eat a lot of burgers, though. It came with the added promise that for every individual burger sold, $1 would be donated by the restaurants to the United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton.
With a grand total of 6,685 burgers sold, Martinus Geleynse, Creative Director of urbanicity Omnimedia and Editor and Publisher of urbanicity Magazine handed a cheque for $6,685 over to Jeff Vallentin, CEO of the United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
“As a result, they’re going to fund programs right here in Hamilton and Burlington which is very, very exciting and very important to us here at urbanicity,” said Geleynse, who coyly admits it has been a lifelong dream to hand someone an oversized plastic cheque.
“I came up with the idea of Novemburger as an idea to reintroduce the urbanicity brand to Hamilton as a fun, accessible brand that has something for everybody,” said Geleynse, “and we thought, ‘what does everybody like? Everybody likes burgers’.”
Vallentin was pleased to accept the cheque and expressed his excitement in seeing a festival that both donated money to the community but also got Hamiltonians engaged in eating local.
“These ‘best ideas’ come out of nowhere and sometimes by surprise, as this one did for me,” Vallentin said.
“There’s no doubt that [almost] $7,000 to any one of the programs we’re supporting could have a huge impact. It could be the difference between keeping the doors open and not,” he said, describing it as a “win, win, win situation”.
Erin Dunham, owner of Rapscallion Rogue Eatery, expressed pride in the restaurant’s and Chef Mike Hutchinson’s prize for best burger. “I gave him free reign and said ‘make the best burger’, and he did.”
Dunham also just ended a successful crowdfunding campaign for $100,000 to open a new restaurant on James Street North.
“We always try to be different than other people in our field, and being innovative, I guess, is one of the side effects of that,” she said.
That’s not all…
urbanicity also took the opportunity of the press conference to announce their next festival of the same nature which will be arriving in just under five months. April Salads will follow the same structure as Novemburger, and again donate to the United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton.
“Out of the most unlikely places comes the best impact,” said Vallentin.
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