The Real Heroes: The suppliers / producers

All our food is sourced locally, ‘Buy West Eat Best’ using suppliers that we have formed a mutually rewarding working relationship. Having lived and worked in Perth for almost 12 years now, I feel I have sufficient local knowledge and judgment as to where and whom my suppliers should be:
Below is a list of companies that are likely to be used at the time of writing: Ryan’s meats, Mt.Barker free range chicken, The Turkish bakery, Morley Growers, Supa Spud, Kailis fresh fish Leederville, Blackwood Valley Beef, The Grocer, Pure & healthy fresh juice company & Bodhis gluten free bakery and Bannister Downs Milk. Exciting!

THE CORE LINES

Meat

All our meat, game and poultry is from WA, period. Our meat is sourced and butchered by our suppliers then handed onto us for ‘PROCESSING OF ALL BURGERS IS DONE ON-SITE’. THIS ENSURES THAT WE ARE IN CONTROL OF THE MEAT AT ALL TIMES, HAND PRESSED PATTIES, REALLY! Service: nothing added but salt and pepper when on the charry. By using fully HACCP accredited suppliers coupled with an MSA quality assurance program, we feel confident in the lines & procedures we have in place at Jus Burgers.

Chips

Royal blue potatoes will be our choice of chip (season dependent) They go through a ‘par-cooking process’ on site at Bibra Lake and are finished in a coating of canola oil, therefore little oxidisation occurs. There is a ‘QA’ programme in place there, however, from time to time the odd one slips through the net, which proves they're real, not frozen! We have two double bin fryers at Jus Burgers. One will simply cook the chips,(and fish when ordered, good oils used, no tallow) whilst the other will be used for the pumpkin, falafel burgers and onion rings, therefore, both our product and oil that is cooked in is 100% vegetarian & 100% West Australian canola.

Bread

Freshly baked sugar free scratch dough bread rolls baked daily in authentic ovens from the team at the Turkish bakery in Vic Park. The girls have just completed their new whole meal Turkish roll which we will have to offer to our guests, embracing their new packaging, ‘buy west eat best’ logo. Many thanks to Selda & Ceyda & family for their produce & support. Greatly appreciated.

Fish

The great people from Festival Fish and Kailis (depending who has the freshest catch!) source a baby reef fillet for our fish burger. Our staff prepare each fillet with a Japanese style panko bread crumb to give it that extra tasty crunch.

The People

From inception to completion I have been driving this idea. In the early days, a few good friends were my ‘go to people’ for inspiration & advice, and then I requested the professional services & creative minds of Scott & Dave.

Architect / Designer - Scott Wilson Design.

Our opening brief to one another was to achieve a fun, functional & quirky space. A burger bar that doesn’t look like a burger bar that, has a strong focus on fully recyclable products to be used (Contact Scott Wilson to elaborate more pls). Whilst seating constraints were annoying, we have designed a product that is still very conducive to dining solo, with a partner or group & with the kids.

David Garland from Abnormal Design

Dave and his team were responsible for the graphic design work and applications for Jus Burgers, as well as the graffiti art that is featured in both stores. Thanks Dave. Visit Abnormal Design for more information.

Special Thanks

Thanks goes to Michael Chestnutt for the photography, Reg Abbott and his team at ASF for the fit- out, as well as Des Gibson at Caterlink for ‘making it happen’ Cheers Guys!

Justin Bell

Brief overview – After training in the U.K for a City and Guilds and the more recent NVQ, I worked in restaurants (French, Swiss, Italian), hotel, events/catering, corporate managed properties, before heading oversees. After extensive travels, and meeting my wife Donna, I worked in Sydney at a Tapas bar and then spent the next four years living and working in Hong Kong, all restaurant based, with some smart operators. I have also had a good grounding in Thai cuisine after spending much time in that country, culminating with a solid education at a well known cooking school in Bangkok.

Australia was calling and, having travelled everywhere in Oz apart from Perth, we decided to head straight there. Back in 99’ I worked at 44 Kings St as 2ic then head chef, 2.5 yrs, Monza in Leederville as head chef/part-owner, 1.5yrs, then onto The Subi Hotel as 2ic for just under a year, before heading down south to Bunker Bay, exec chef, 2.5yrs. On returning to Perth, I went to the Crowne Plaza hotel, IHG, exec chef, 2 years ……. now on to my 5th opening, ‘Q’ restaurant and El Pomposo in Hong Kong, Monza in Perth, Bunker Bay in Dunsborough and now Jus Burgers Perth. Now 40 years of age but, still very passionate about my chosen industry, the journey has been awesome.

Promoting ‘Health’

Claiming to be ‘healthy’ has to be really justified in my opinion and I believe that operators should be careful when promoting this in the market-place. At The Crowne plaza hotel for example, we used ‘Food Groups Australia’ when designing our room service menus, a long and very detailed exercise, whereby the food was broken-down by experts, then passed-on to our guests in confidence. Trying to ‘do the right thing’ sits better with me personally, buying quality local produce, keeping it simple and passing this on to the consumer.

Copy Cats

I would be very surprised if there is another Jus Burgers out there. This model was derived with point of difference as a key driver. Location was important in determining the correct vibe. The ‘look’ was something that Scott and I felt passionately about and, I would like to think that our product is driven with integrity, lots of research and many ‘cook-offs’ to get to where we are now. Having locally witnessed some competitors use models both in Melbourne and the U.K as their benchmark, we hope that our product remains honest & real!

Beverage

Commencing with no liquor license, a strong emphasis was placed on beverages made in-house, as well as a great range of ‘off the shelf’ organic drinks & sourcing freshly squeezed local WA fruit courtesy of ‘pure & healthy fresh juice company’. Our strategy was to create one or two very good in house produced beverages as opposed to a dozen or so average ones to choose from ……for example our pomegranate, fresh mint & berry frappe …still going strong today, we've just brought back our mango smoothie due to overwhelming demand, think mango milk, fresh ginger and a squeeze of lemon juice.....lip smackingly good. Not to forget we've also got some yummy milk flavours from Bannister Downs.  Better still as there were no dodgy topping sauces, additives, colourings, preservatives to be seen in Jus Burgers! Coffee: After long discussions, and with the size of our shops in mind, we have decided not to offer coffee. All JB locations are populated with an abundance of coffee shops, it didn't make sense to add ourselves to that list.