The Burger Beastro's Expansion

Let's get the awkward part of this out of the way first. My name is Dustin Young, and I am the owner of The Burger Beastro, a mobile food truck based out of Beebe, Arkansas, which opened in June 2023.

Now, let's back up a little bit and summarize my resume over the past 25 years. In April 1999, I was hired as a dishwasher for Dixie Cafe in Cabot. Six months later, I was moved over to the cook line for a few shifts, then eventually my full time position was line cook. For the next 25 years, I have filled every position between line cook and Manager at restaurants such as Dixie Cafe, T.G.I.Fridays, Iron Skillet, and Tacos 4 Life. In addition, I have held the position of General Manager at Mazzio's Italian Eatery and Marco's Pizza in Searcy.

With the exception of the past year in the food truck, I have been out of the restaurant industry for just a little over three years, working as a City Mail Carrier in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

In June 2021, I bought a retired 20 year old school bus with no intention of converting it to a food truck. It sat in my driveway for almost a year while I spent way too much time looking up YouTube videos of the many different ways people all over the country transformed their old buses to RVs or even their permanent homes. I realized I would never be able to make mine anything like the beautiful creations I had been watching, so I finally had the crazy idea to turn it into something I would enjoy and get way more use out of. In that moment, The Burger Beastro was born!

If you've come to this page without having ordered from us before, let me give you some short details about our menu, as well as what we would like to expand it to. When we first opened, we started with eight specialty burgers and three pretty basic sandwiches, as well as the option to create your own masterpiece with any of our toppings, sauces and cheeses we keep in stock. Each burger or sandwich comes with a choice of chips and a 12oz canned soft drink. Mac & Cheese made with our own creamy cheese sauce can be added for an extra charge. Since opening in mid-2023, we are always testing out several different burgers, sauces and sandwiches that could easily be added to the menu, such as The Fajita Burger, the AvoCaprese Sandwich, and even a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich made with hand sliced ribeye steak. We were unable to find a fryer that would work out well enough in the bus, so we currently just offer a small variety of chips with our burgers. Moving into a building would definitely give us the ability to have a deep fryer or three which would add so many delicious options to our menu. Since day one, five of our sauces and our pickles are all made by us, and any burger that has bacon comes with three slices, woven into a square the perfect size for our burgers.

If you've made it this far without clicking away, I appreciate your interest in the project so far, so.. let's move on to the business aspect, and plans for the future.

Recently, I have decided to expand the business into an actual building. To do that I'm seeking investors who are interested in helping us move on to the next steps. The location I have found is in North Little Rock with the potential to gross between $300,000 and $500,000 or more annually with several hundreds of thousands of people in foot traffic every month.

Working in several different restaurants over the years, I've learned marketing is one of the most important ways to keep the business alive, and it must be constant and consistent. When starting up a new business, especially a restaurant, it's important to quickly build a good relationship with everyone around you. To do this, we would start by going to neighboring businesses to introduce ourselves, hand out business cards and discount coupons for the employees as well as a few copies of our menu for their break room. Of course, this process would have to be repeated often to keep the relationships healthy, and you never know how many new people you'll meet each time you go to the surrounding businesses.

To start off as smooth as possible, the menu would consist of our current menu, plus a kid's meal option. As the staff gets used everything, we would incorporate more items, such as chicken strips, new burgers and sandwiches, not to mention the possibility of adding chicken sandwiches, wings and specialty hot dogs.

After a few calculations, the minimum amount needed to be raised would be close to $70,000 to get everything started. This includes the first two months lease payments, equipment needed to furnish the restaurant space, opening inventory, beginning labor, a few remodeling costs and a little extra for anything I have not thought of as of writing this proposal.

With the loan option, I'm offering 115% of your money paid back to you over time with a monthly payment 15% of each month's ending net profits after all expenses until 100% of the loan is paid in full, plus 15% of the total loan. If multiple people were to take this option, the percentage would have to be split between the number of people. (i.e.: 2 people would be paid 7.5%; three people would get 5% each, and so on). I am also open hearing to other reasonable options if you are interested and have some different ideas.

If you would like to help, but are not interested in a long term loan or investment, we have set up this GoFundMe account which will serve two purposes. If we are unable raise the full amount for a permanent location, it will go towards making improvements to our food truck in the form of a fire suppression system for the venthood, professional paint job/wrap on the bus, and a few minor improvements.

If you are unable to help financially, all I ask is for you to share this page with friends and family to help get it seen by as many people as we can.

Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal. If you have any questions, comments or would like to help in other ways not mentioned above please feel free to email, call or send me a message on Facebook.

Dustin Young

The Burger Beastro; Owner/Operator