THEY DO IT FOR THE LOVE OF BACON
Bacon Brothers has been making mouthwatering burgers and bacon butties for eight years and the business just keeps growing.
Like most meat eaters, Troy Bilbrough is a big fan of bacon. Knowing others appreciate bacon as much as he does, he started a business revolving around it. “I’ve always loved bacon and I thought other Kiwis did as well,” he says. And so, Bacon Brothers was born. Starting as a stall at the Christchurch Farmers’ Market, in Riccarton Bush, the business has since expanded to include an Auckland food truck and two restaurants.
But Bilbrough didn’t expect Bacon Brothers to become such a well-known brand – he simply started doing it on the side to earn some extra money while completing his commercial pilot’s licence. “I started cooking burgers in the markets to just pay off my student loan, and it started going really well,” he says. “By the time I finished my pilot’s licence a year later, we had a successful business.”
Bilbrough decided that instead of working as a pilot, he wanted to open a restaurant. Bacon Bros worked events such as weddings, markets and birthday parties to raise funds to open its first burger bar at Christchurch’s Little High Eatery. “The first day we sold out, the next day we sold out and just kept on selling out,” says Bilbrough.
“WE PRETTY MUCH PUT IN EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR WE HAD.” TROY BILBROUGH
“We saved up some money and then we opened another store at the Riverside Market.” Selling out was not simply encouraging in those early days – it was necessary, with Bilbrough saying he and his partner were living day-to-day. “It was a really, really scary time. We pretty much put in every single dollar we had and while we were doing the build at Little High, we were so poor.
“We were just eating leftover bread from the farmers’ market and leftover bacon.”
If that wasn’t stressful enough, they were also working gruelling 20-hour days. “When we opened the doors at Little High, we had no money in the bank and had spent everything. We needed to sell out on day one – we had to sell out every day to buy bread and bacon for the next day.” Bilbrough says. It was particularly frightening taking that leap with the business when he could have had a safe job “working as a banker or accountant or pilot”.
That should give you some sense that Bilbrough’s road to hospitality was hardly typical. He started out as an accountant, before deciding he wanted to travel the globe and raise money for charity in the process. He skateboarded 10,000km around the world, raising $10,000 for youth cancer charity CanTeen. When he returned home to New Zealand, he went into aviation and did “banking on the side”, working at ANZ.
His experience in a variety of fields has taught him skills he’s found valuable in establishing Bacon Bros. “That helped me with the business knowledge, working both the accounting and the banking. The flying helped me learn how to multitask and work in a team, and also to work in stressful situations.
“When you’re in a cockpit of a plane, it’s similar to working in a kitchen when you’ve got all these things going on at the same time.”
As the name suggests, Bacon Bros is a family affair – Bilbrough has worked with each of his two brothers during different stages of establishing the business. The other family members currently working for the business are his younger brother, Luke, and his partner, Chloe. Of working with his family, Bilbrough says it has been a fun experience. “Normally everyone’s so busy that if we didn’t work together we wouldn’t see each other.”
255 Saint Asaph Street, Central City 96 Oxford Terrace, Central City baconbrothers.co.nz