Dish Cult Meets: Scott Collins, MEATliquor’s co-founder

Dish Cult: What’s your background in hospitality and have you always wanted to work in this industry?

Scott Collins: I have always wanted to work in it, from the age of 14. I got sucked into the world of banking though, between 18 and 22, before spending 10 years in hospitality in LA. When I was back in London, I did 10 years of opening my own pubs and getting involved with a company called Capital Pub Company, which was sold in 2011. And then MEATliquor kind of started as an accident, and the last 11 years have been dedicated to that.

DC: Where did the name MEATliquor come from?

SC: Drink! We were drunk. We started off with Meat Wagon, because we essentially started off as a wagon selling meat. Then we did this pop up, which was kind of a speakeasy, so we called that Meat Easy. It wasn’t until we actually had our first bricks and mortar site with a bar, about a week or two before opening, that we landed on MEATliquor.

DC: How would you describe your restaurants to someone who’s never been before?

SC: It’s just a nice marriage of Americana influenced food with great music, great cocktails and beers. It’s all elements that other people have done before, but we were the first that sort of tied it all together.

DC: What would you say makes your burgers different from others?

SC: I mean, we were very, very different when we first opened. No one in the UK was doing smash burger like what we were doing. There’s a lot more of that now, but imitation is a form of flattery isn’t it?

DC: Who are your influences, if any?

SC: When I was in LA 25 years ago, the only decent thing I could afford to eat was In-N-Out Burger. And it’s still as good today as it was then. It’s still as affordable too. I didn’t ever think of copying In-N-Out Burger and bringing it to London. It took me 15 years to open a burger place.

DC: How did you come up with the menu?

SC: It was just influenced by travels and likes, dislikes. Once you cobble it together, you then you get a bit of competence to start inventing stuff rather than sort of paying homage to stuff, so things like Monkey Fingers were our idea. It’s not particularly ingenious – battered chicken with buffalo sauce – but the way we did it, the shape of it, the name, etc, we had to trademark it because so many people were ripping us off. That’s still a firm favourite.

DC: Is that the most popular order on your menu?

SC: It’s still the Dead Hippie and the House Grog. What is very pleasing is we’ve always done vegetarian and vegan food. We do more of it and do it better now than ever. So when vegan people discover us and fall in love with our food – because let’s face it, MEATliquor is misleading – it’s great.

DC: Have you spotted any new foodie trends?

SC: We’ve just been recently hand-picked to get an exclusivity on the launch of Impossible Burgers – the American plant based firm – to launch their chicken nuggets. They were launched in MEATliquor only recently and they’re proving massively popular. And it isn’t just vegans that are enjoying them, it’s meat eaters.

DC: Have you got any more plans to open up other locations? And are there any other cuisines that you’d like to branch into as well?

SC: No other cuisines for now, it’s enough controlling this sort of financial climate without venturing into something else. But we have got another couple of sites lined up for the second half of this calendar year, so watch this space.

DC: If you can invite any three celebrities, dead or alive, to join you for a burger, who would they be and why?

SC: Ray Kroc, the guy who discovered the first McDonald’s. He was a very good businessman, so I’d like him to join and give me some tips on global expansion. Princess Diana, because we’d have the Jubilee on in the background and she would have some good gossip. And Robin Williams to lighten the mood.