Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex and Paula Armstrong.
1999 – Paula, a little Italian rebel stumbles upon Alex, a crazy London punk at a squat party in Hackney. A reckless friendship is forged.
2003 – Alex leaves London to move back to Long Beach, California, Paula stays in London doing her thang!
2008 – After years apart, the two friends bump into each other in Berlin, Germany at @Punkanddisorderlyfestival …and are punk and disorderly together again!
2009 – Paula moves to California and marries Alex right there and then!
2010 – The two start volunteering their free time to NO KILL shelters…learn a lot about injustice to animals and activism to protect them.
2012 – NO silver spoon here, folks… so they hold down their day jobs…but their true passion is animals rights…hence it seems time to ditch meat!
2016 – Alex and Paula learn about the cruelty in the dairy and egg industry…so decide to ditch those too!
2017 – What the hell is going on with vegans not having awesome choices?? Cruelty-free does not mean yum-yum-free, right?!?!
2018 – Paula and Alex start messing around with recipes…the world needs sublime vegan burgers!
2019 – VBurger is born as a successful pop-up in SoCal!
2020 – Oh yes we are!!…Opening our first VBurger Punk shop in the LBC!!!! And this is just the beginning…!!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Finding the right location was key and once we did in the heart of the Retro Row, Long Beach, we needed to convince the property owner our concept was the right one for his building, as he had many applications for the space. They were extremely skeptical of our idea, but after eight months of negotiations and convincing the owners, they finally agreed a Plant Based Burger shop was a great idea for their building.
We then faced the normal challenges any new tenant improvement restaurant build-out faces. Architects, the City and the General Contractor all did a great job. We were promised to be open in six months but the build-out construction took eight months instead of the three months promised. It was fantastic to see the structural changes the building underwent and we love the finish shop (its just perfect) but there was financial pressure to open as soon as possible which we then shared with our General Contractor daily – LOL.
So we were just about to open when the dreaded pandemic hit California and the rest of the world. The city of Long Beach shut down and final inspections where hard to get accomplished, let alone everyone was now staying at home.
We did find help and we managed to make it threw the pandemic ok and we passed all our inspections and we were ready to open for pick up and take away………..
Well, right before we did George Floyd was wrongfully killed by police and the people had had enough and protest and demonstrations were needed to enlighten others of this terrible wrong doing.
Unfortunately, the large demonstration that happened in Long Beach CA on May 31st, 2020 had some undermining criminal attendees who set upon small businesses thought out the city, smashing windows, setting fires and looting. And guess what Vburger was one of those businesses. We had all our front windows and doors smashed out, but no other damage inside, no one was hurt and nothing stolen. So us, protestors and local neighbors cleaned up all that glass, protected VBurger until our GC arrived to board up. We meet a lot of great folks in the process that night.
Insurance kicked-in after the deductible and all the windows are now fixed and we are going to finally open Wed July 8th, 2020 11am – 7pm for outside dining, pickup and takeaway.
It has been a very eye-opening experience and we have learned a lot. The next Vburger location will hopefully open much quicker and with less obstacles.
Vburger – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Vburger is a 100% Plant Based Burger shop. Paula and I have both been vegan for almost five years now. We were able to do so because we veganized all our favorite dishes as close as we could to the real thing by researching and trying different recipes, measurements and new vegan products that were now consistently hitting the market.
Once we tried the Impossible burger and the Beyond Meat burger, we knew we had found our replacement ground beef, now it was time to perfect them ever more, to taste as close to the real thing as we could. I am very proud to say we did and now I can honestly say our burgers are 100% the same taste and goodness a ground beef burger has… with countless carnivores commending us on them.
While we were changing our eating habits, we also had been volunteering at animal shelters for the last ten years and started to see terrible injustice happening to healthy dogs and cats at these shelters. Well, us being the punk rockers that we are, we started to QUESTION why such healthy beautiful young dogs and cats where being killed in large numbers all over the state, country and the world. We joined the local chapter of an advocacy group which had been successful in implementing new progressive policies and procedures in other cities and which had proven to be effective in saving many healthy and treatable dogs and cats at their shelters.
We started to meet with our Shelter Manager, Parks Director and City Council members and attended City Council Meetings asking to bring about this same change in policy and culture that was happening in other city municipal animal shelters. Last year 2019, we can happily say the City of Long Beach had an 88 % percent live release rate for healthy and treatable animals – a huge improvement, but still a long way to go.
We thought our great burgers could do really well and we could then help our city shelter even more by collaborating with them to save even more of our cities sheltered animals. We stream videos of dogs and cats for adoption at our restaurant. We will be encouraging our staff to volunteer at our local shelter and will provide a monetary raise to them if they do. We are starting the VBurger Adopters Club, where if you adopt from our city shelter, you will receive discounts on food item specials, and in turn the shelter will provide discounts on animal adoptions if you provide a Vburger receipt. and that is why the idea of Vburger was born and that is exactly our mission statement… ADOPT/FOSTER/VOLUNTEER/DONATE/ADVOCATE
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
All the positive feedback from both vegan and nonvegans on all of our food. It takes some doing to create meals that taste exactly like the carnivorous counterparts….. I see folks who would not normally eat a vegan meal now enjoy it and rave about it to friends. We know each vegan meal is one less animal meal – less pain, better for our planet and better for our health.
Pricing:
- Burgers start at $8.50
- Sides are no more that $8.00
- Try the 4 X 4 for $22.00 its a monster
Contact Info:
- Address: 420 Cherry Ave
Long Beach CA 90802 - Website: thevburger.com
- Phone: 562 588 9073
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: vburger.vegan
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vburgervegan-111959457246122/
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