Rochester Burger Week

Main Ingredient: Impacting Food Insecurity

The Rochester community came out strong for the first-ever Rochester Burger Week in 2018. Over 10 restaurants participated in the week long commitment to donate at least $1 to Foodlink for every burger purchased at their establishment during Burger Week. But one week of burger consumption alone could not solve the meal gap that continues to exist for many families.

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The CITY News team and Foodlink set their minds on growing the community and restaurants' engagement in Rochester Burger Week in year two with the pro-bono support of The Cause Collaborative. Our team was hungry for the social media challenge and excited to help raise greater awareness for one of our existing partners, Foodlink, via a summer of food-based photography, taste-testing, chef interviews, and copywriting.

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#RocBurgerWeek Route | @bladesbarandgrill presents "Porky's Nightmare" — an 8oz brisket-blended burger, real Canadian bacon ham, slow-roasted bbq pulled pork, four strips of applewood bacon, homemade bell pepper coleslaw, topped with hand-shaved onion straws and cheddar cheese. This may be porky's nightmare, but it's the burger of OUR dreams.

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We approached the weeks leading up to #RocBurgerWeek as a full-team effort. Over 20 restaurants registered to participate and showcase specialty burgers, so with spreadsheets, photo, video, and detailed ingredient assignments, we ventured off to all twenty locations for a behind the scenes with each burger to build the anticipation for the public launch of Burger Week. While I enjoyed the weekly field trips and conversations with many local business owners and chefs, I most enjoyed flexing my creative writing muscles as the main food copywriter for the Roc Burger Week social media captions and creating a compelling Instagram Story journey on the agency's profile.

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#RocBurgerWeek Route | Our lips are NOT sealed on this one — @stickylips_bbq is featuring an off-menu special for #rocburgerweek called The Trash Heap. Don't let the name deter you (I'm mean, we are living in the city of garbage plates, here). This burger heap includes 8oz of angus beef topped with sweet collard greens, home cut fries, provolone cheese, house-cured bacon, and meat hot sauce between two DiPaolo buns. Forget the curb, we're taking the Trash Heap straight to our stomachs.

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We were proud to help this community-based initiative double in size in just one year, grow Instagram-only communications to also include Facebook, Facebook Events, and Twitter, and continue #startingbeef with other food influencers across social - exceeding the prior year's fundraising total by raising over $2500 for Foodlink.