Award-winning sustainable business, Citizen Collective are on a mission to stop needless food waste and rescue foods to upcycle them into delicious new offerings. 

In partnership with our mates at Citizen and perfectly paired with BurgerFuel’s Wild Heart burger, this Rescued Cherry Cola combines dark, rich, vibrant flavours with rescued (export quality, but aesthetically imperfect) Central Otago cherries and rum wash (the by-product botanicals from rum-making).

Every can of BurgerFuel & Citizen saves 29 perfectly good cherries from going to landfill.

#savethecherries

These moreish morsels were the centrepiece in our limited-edition burger, Electric Pūhā, and put a spotlight on a sustainable superfood and one of the most nutritious seeds on the planet: hemp seed. 

With a fuel injection of protein, iron, and fibre from chickpeas and broccoli, all made deliciously kick-ass with the natural goodness of hemp seed, oil, and powder, they boasted  a nutritious hit with every bite. The Hemp & Broc bites were coated with breadcrumbs, hemp seeds and roasted pumpkin seeds for a golden crunch and perfectly balanced with our sweet, batch-brewed tomato relish.

Every modern-day superhero/ine needs the best super fuel to power them through the day. So, our very first smoothie, Kaitahi Super Green, gave that energy hit and was greener than Kryptonite.

We blended velvety hemp milk, creamy coconut ice-cream and a Kaitahi superfood mix (drops packed full of banana, golden kiwifruit, and super greens which included spinach, native kawakawa and pūhā.

Kaitahi Super Green was a collaboration with start-up and award-winning iwi enterprise, Kaitahi Kitchen. Together with parent company, Kii Tahi Ltd, they run a social ecological entrepreneurship model, collaboratively sourcing and growing native plant foods and promoting native superfoods to create enterprising opportunities for individuals and families to participate in within their region. Kii Tahi Ltd eco-source native plants and provide ecological services to the land and waterways with riparian planting programmes. Learn more about them HERE.

In 2019, we stepped into an exciting new frontier with Beyond Beleaf, BurgerFuel’s first plant-based beef burger.

Served as a mini-sized burger the Beyond Beleaf contained all the delicious ingredients you’d expect to find in a gourmet BurgerFuel cheeseburger, but it was 100% vegan, with a Beyond Burger patty, vegan provolone cheese, vegan aioli, salad, relish and all on our delicious mini artisan buns. It tasted so close to the real thing, you could be easily fooled.

The Beyond Burger Patty was created by one of the leading innovators in the alternative protein sector, Beyond Meat, and was the world's first plant-based burger that looked, cooked, and tasted like a fresh beef burger. Free from gluten, soy and GMOs, it was 100% vegan, high in iron and protein, and made from all-natural ingredients – the colouring came from beetroot!

The primary source of protein in the Beyond Burger patty comes from peas, and the protein content of the patty is a filling 20g per serving. Beyond claimed that production of the patty uses less of the earth’s resources (like water and land) and produces fewer greenhouse gases - ‘by shifting from animal to plant-based meat, we can positively affect growing global issues such as constraints on natural resources and animal welfare’.

For humanity and beyond, this was a burger for everyone.

The rise in flexitarian and reducetarians in NZ prompted us to continue trialling plant-based meat (meatless meat) alternatives on the BurgerFuel menu. We were particularly interested in providing options for meat-eaters looking to reduce their intake and add more plant-based options to their diet, for ethical or environmental reasons. 

Plast-based meat products are said to have less of an environmental impact than that of conventional meat farming, in terms of water and land usage, and carbon emissions.

Alternative Muscle and Chook Free were developed for both vegan and carnivorous customers and replicated the taste of existing menu items, the American Muscle and Mini Chook Royale.

We continue to keep our eye on consumer demand and new plant-based meat options.