Owen Taylor & Sons, based in Leabrooks, won the title Overall Winner of the ‘Foodservice’ with its new improved recipe 6oz Lamb and Mint Burger now called the “Champion Lamb Burger”. As one of only four category winners, the company stands a strong chance of claiming the highly sought after ‘England’s Best Burger 2014’ title.
When informed of the company’s success, Carl Evans, operations manager at Owen Taylor, said: “It’s fantastic news! Lamb and mint is a classic flavour combination and it’s a popular burger, but we have recently tweaked the recipe, working hard to ensure we achieved the right balance of flavours. In developing the burger we knew that the quality of the lamb would be key to its success. We use Quality Standard Mark lamb sourced directly from local farms and we make sure that we get the right coarseness of the meat to create the perfect lamb burger for sale throughout the foodservice trade.
“As a business we pride ourselves on producing quality meat products for our customers. Winning this award is great for us, but it’s great for our customers too as it means that they can promote the fact they have an award winning burger on the menu!”
Owen Taylor will now have to wait until the Meat Management Awards, which take place in London on 4 June, to find out if it has been crowned the Overall Winner of the competition.
Carl said: “The whole team is really looking forward to finding out whether we have the best burger in England – it’s a huge accolade and we have our fingers crossed that we will be bringing the title home to Derbyshire!”
Competition organiser Hugh Judd, EBLEX foodservice project manager, said: “Owen Taylor’s Lamb and Mint burger really was outstanding and definitely deserved to win the Foodservice category. This was a really tough competition with a record breaking number of entries in the first round, so to come out on top as one of the four Category Winners really is a fantastic achievement. Congratulations and well done!”
Despite a record number of entries in the biannual competition organised by industry body EBLEX, Owen Taylor was one of only 23 companies to achieve a gold award (scoring between 95-100 points in the first round) and make it through to the final.
In the final round of judging all the gold standard burgers were subjected to further rigorous testing, after which overall winners will be determined in each of the four categories: ‘Independent Butcher’, ‘Multiple Retailer’, ‘Foodservice’ and ‘Premium Quality Innovative Burgers’. The four category winners will be presented with their awards at the Meat Management Awards on 4 June, before the Overall Winner is announced.
