Burgers by the numbers: ‘A battle where everyone wins’
Feb. 5, 2021
The final numbers are in, and the best one is tied to a big donation following a record year for the Downtown Burger Battle.
Ready? Here they are.
Burgers sold: 31,000
Smashing the previous record of 19,000, the two dozen participating restaurants drove burger sales to new heights this January.
Dollars spent on burgers: $436,606
That’s money going directly to restaurants at a time they need it most: the winter and coming through the pandemic, when traffic generally has been down.
Economic impact: $940,850
That’s a big ripple effect. Remember, burger sales pay people, and those people spend money. Burger sales draw visitors downtown, and they then go support other businesses.
Call to Freedom donation: $31,000
That’s why this year’s Downtown Burger Battle organized by Downtown Sioux Falls Inc. was so significant.
Early on, Sioux Falls-based MarketBeat pledged to donate $1 for every burger sold.
Of course, no one knew how many that would mean, including founder Matt Paulson. But he was all in anyway.
It started with a collaboration between MarketBeat and Chef Lance’s on Phillips. Paulson thought of sponsoring a burger to support the new restaurant, and it took off fast.
Created by Chef Lance’s on Phillips, the MarketBeat burger featured a ground brisket patty topped with sharp cheddar, pork belly planks, spicy pickle mayonnaise, baby romaine and Roma tomatoes on a Breadsmith bun. It also was the first sponsored burger in competition history.
“I tell Matt quite often that I love how his brain works,” White said in a statement. “We’ve been working with Call to Freedom for years in support of their mission to help victims of human trafficking. What Matt did was bring a dark subject to light, and that’s when the competition became impossible to lose. Even if the burger didn’t win, our community would win.”
January was also National Human Trafficking Awareness Month, an important and timely tie-in for the local community, said Becky Rasmussen, executive director of Call to Freedom.
“We are humbled and grateful for the generosity of MarketBeat, Chef Lance’s on Phillips and our wonderful community,” Rasmussen said. “This donation will go to help survivors coming out of human trafficking by providing much-needed resources, including housing, medical, safety and basic needs. Ending human trafficking takes a community, and our community has responded to the call.”
Hence, the Downtown Burger Battle became a battle where everyone was a winner.
While showing a 163 percent increase on dollars spent year-over-year is impressive, the economic impact goes beyond the burger count, said DTSF community outreach coordinator Sadie Swier.
“Burger Battle has grown to become part of the Sioux Falls lifestyle,” Swier said. “Throughout January, whether you scroll through social media or start a casual conversation, the topic turns to Burger Battle. Not only is the number of burgers sold impressive, but the economic impact extends by driving more foot traffic to other downtown entities. MarketBeat and Chef Lance’s collaboration is what makes our city so special. DTSF looks forward to many more creative collaborations for future Burger Battles and other DTSF events.”
What’s MarketBeat?
The business community increasingly is aware of MarketBeat, which is consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing startups, but many burger eaters likely weren’t.
It’s a financial media company whose mission is to empower individual investors to make better trading decisions by providing them with real-time financial information and objective market research. More than 2 million investors receive MarketBeat’s flagship newsletter, MarketBeat Daily Ratings. The company also publishes a network of financial news websites that garner more than 15 million page views each month, a suite of web-based investment research software called MarketBeat All Access and a mobile stock research app that is available on iOS and Android.
“MarketBeat may be the first financial media company to co-create a burger for competition, but that’s not the obvious takeaway here,” Paulson said.
“Ultimately, I hope every business owner who witnessed our unconventional approach to competition is inspired to think creatively about marketing and business growth through collaboration,” he continued.
“By partnering with Chef Lance’s on Phillips, we highlighted an up-and-coming small business in our community while making the MarketBeat brand better known in the Sioux Falls community. We then structured our charitable giving in a way that would optimize turnout for all competing businesses while maximizing the correlating donation to Call to Freedom.”
And, if you somehow missed finding out the winner of Burger Battle, click below.
