Hat Creek Burger, Co.

- Location & Hours: 
  Burger Bus: Roves to UT sporting events - location & hours vary accordingly. Follow website and twitter to learn location.
  Hat Creek Burger, Co.: 5400 Burnet Rd. 
- Telephone: 512-732-2025
- Website: www.hatcreekburgers.com / Facebook: Hat Creek Burger Co. / Twitter: hatcreekburger
- Cuisine: Burgers

Hometown hero Drew Gressett grew up here in Austin and graduated from the University of Texas before doing a fair amount of traveling between DC, Dallas and China with a real estate venture.  But he had always had a dream of owning a hamburger stand and decided it was now or never when he opened Hat Creek Burgers in October of 2008 with no regrets. 

Drew says his mom taught him how to make his first burger.  “She always cooked a typical backyard burger with thicker patty – but ours are thinner.  Manageability of a smaller burger, that’s our angle at Hat Creek.”  His favorite way to eat a “Big Hat” burger is with American cheese and ketchup only.  The size of the hat refers to the size of the burger: the “Big Hat” has two 1/5 lb patties while the “Little Hat” is one 1/5 lb. patty.  They offer four cheeses to choose from including American, Cheddar, Pepper Jack and Swiss.  Drew says the premise of their product is a super fresh hand-pattied burger whose meat has never seen a freezer.  “Freezers are for ice cream,” he says.  His burgers have fresh cracked pepper, and are all natural with no hormones, no antibiotics, all vegetarian fed beef.

While Hat Creek started out as a trailer, they moved into a brick and mortar building in 2009 and now use the trailer for special events such as UT baseball games.  Drew mentions a good point in that “the mobile trailer is such a great platform to eventually get into a brick and mortar, and then for a brick and mortar, it’s good to expand business with a mobile unit.”  Coach Barnes and Coach Brown are among two of Drew’s guests.  His employees love the burgers so much, that one of them commenced to eating a 10-patty Big Hat after clocking out. 

The name Hat Creek refers to one of Drew’s favorite books and movies: Lonesome Dove, which contains the Hat Creek Cattle Company.  The real Hat Creek is a trout fishing stream in northern California, and although he hasn’t been yet, Drew does love to fly fish when he’s not at the grill.