How to Set Up a Burger Bar
A burger bar is not a theme. It is a staffing decision. You cook one thing well, everyone else does the rest, and you get to stand with a drink instead of taking twelve separate orders.
The whole point is that you cook one thing and stop negotiating. Everything else is laid out and people help themselves.
Start with a patty worth building on
“I like a thicker burger. You know, when you get that sear and the crunch and the smash burger, that's pretty good. But I like a good, thick burger.”
Gray Shipley
“You don't want a lean burger. You don't want some silly 90-10. You know, get a good 80-20, 75-25 blend.”
Gray Shipley
A thicker patty at eighty-twenty holds up under a pile of toppings. A thin lean patty disappears under them, which is how you end up with people eating a sandwich that happens to contain beef.
Lay it out in build order
People assemble in the order the table presents, so present it in the order it should be built. Left to right: buns, patties, cheese, hot toppings, cold toppings, sauces, pickles. Put the sauces near the end so they do not drip across everything in front of them.
The toppings worth having
- Three cold. Lettuce, tomato, red onion, sliced that morning.
- Two hot. Caramelized onions and bacon cover almost everyone.
- Two sauces, made properly. One mayonnaise-based, one sharp.
- Pickles, separate. They need their own bowl or they end up in everything.
“If you're going to put mayonnaise on a burger, take the time to get an egg and some lemon juice and make the, you know, put some avocado oil in. Make the mayonnaise, it ain't hard.”
Gray Shipley
Keep the cooked patties moving
Cook in batches and hold them on a tray under foil, not on the grill where they keep cooking. Stay one batch ahead of the queue and nobody waits. If you fall behind, the bar stops being a bar and becomes a line.
Feeding vegetarians at a burger bar
Someone will not be eating beef, and the graceful version of this is not an apology. Put their option on the grill first, on clean grates, before anything else goes on. It takes two minutes at the start and it means they are not eating last or eating around things.
The one rule to give people
Tell them to build and move. A burger bar jams at the sauces because people stand and consider. Say it once at the start and the whole thing runs itself.
Dry-aged patties at 5.3 ounces, portioned already. Count heads, count patties, done.
View ProductSame portion, everyday pricing. This is the one to buy by the case when the number gets large.
View Product
One pound packs of dry-aged ground beef. Four quarter-pounders or three third-pounders to the pack.
View ProductQuantities are in how much beef per person, the full shop is in the cookout shopping list, and the day itself is planned here.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and left his words alone.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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