Editors’ Choice
A & B Burgers
beverly
A wide variety of toppings, including fig jam, eggs, and guacamole, elevate these burgers to gourmet status. Crave something fancier? For an extra $5, substitute a premium Wagyu beef patty for any burger.
206 Cabot St., Beverly, 978-993-7394, anbburgers.com
Readers’ Choice
A & B Burgers
beverly
+Pandemic Pivot
A & B Burgers
Community has always been a big part of A & B Burgers’ mission, so when the pandemic struck, owner Thomas Holland and his team swung into action nearly immediately, starting with providing meals to kids who were no longer getting school lunch. But it quickly burgeoned to feeding staff at Beverly Hospital, and residents of local homeless shelters, where people were no longer going in to prepare meals.
“Homeless shelters rely on people coming in preparing meals for them,” Holland says. “And especially during the beginning of the outbreak, everyone was scared to do that. And so they had nobody coming in to feed them.”
The plan to prepare a hundred meals a couple days a week grew to 750 to 1,000 meals a week, for 13 weeks at press time.
“It’s a lot of food,” Holland says. And not just any food either. Holland himself was homeless at one point when he lived on the West Coast, relying on meal programs and soup kitchens, and recalled the monotony of the offerings.
“It was the same meal every day—a hot dog, an apple, and milk, because that’s what they could afford to do.” So Holland sat down with his team and planned a menu that was different every day—burgers one day, a salad with grilled steak another day, barbecued ribs, and fried chicken have all been on offer, and always balanced: fruit, salad, protein and a drink.
“We made sure to change it up as much as we could,” Holland says. “We had a lot of fun with it.”
Holland says he couldn’t have done it without the help of generous supporters—he first turned to A & B investors like Donna and Ted Karwoski, but then Benjamin Watson, former tight end for the New England Patriots, and his wife Kirsten made a generous donation, as did Goldberg Properties, A & B’s landlord, and many others.
The benefit was twofold, Holland explained. Not only were they able to feed people in need, they were also able to keep employees on the payroll.
“Everyone that worked with us got very behind it and really put a lot into it,” Holland says. “It became a real bright spot in a really dark time.” So not only are the burgers amazing, A & B Burgers’ community spirit is unyielding.