REAL FOOD. REAL STORY
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Marty is the son of a butcher from Czech Republic. After graduating hospitality school in Europe, he worked around Europe in restaurants, bars and hotels. Then he left for NZ to work and make money to open a burger shop in his hometown.
Choosing the hard way of working in forestry and as a firefighter for 13 years, he planted over 1 million trees and led teams to tackle the Pigeon Valley fires, but mainly fell in love with BBQ.
Hosting his friends every weekend for smoked meats and burgers as a weekend hobby turned into obsession. So, when Covid struck, he bought an empty shell of a food truck, hoping that one day the delayed dream would become reality. After multiple surgeries, the time came to ‘slow down’ and quit his forestry business for burgers.
Little did we know…
TURNED DOWN EVERYWHERE
We began by being turned down everywhere by so many locations trying to get a lease for 20m² somewhere around Richmond, Nelson, Kirby Lane, new community developments, anywhere.
We were even told by Council that we would fail, never have employees and never be able to live off the food truck. At one point we thought it would be easier finding place in New York City than Tasman. We took matters into our own hands and decided to start up in a gravelly carpark in the middle of nowhere in Annesbrook’s industrial zone as an act of rebellion. So – our story began down on 111 Bolt Road where Sarah from Zoom car rental gave us that one chance we needed.
THEN THE COMMUNITY CAME
The result? Busy from day one, with a wait time on Friday and Saturday up to 2 hours. Even on cold winter evenings there was crowd of people waiting in the dark around the lone beacon of artisanal burgers. We stayed continually open all winter, every day, even through a state of emergency, never closing once when we said we’d be open.
After 6 weeks of being opened we placed 5th and 6th best burger in NZ in the Burger Nation competition. At the end of the food truck era 10 months later, we were mincing over 100 kgs of aged beef a week, hand pressing over 130 kgs of fermented fries and cooking 40 litres of sauces from scratch each week—doing over 650 burgers a week. The people proved him right—that handmade quality food served simply is the way.
Never promoted or helped by Councils, local tourist organisations or local newspapers. Just driven by word of mouth and the power of community.
We are community.
FROM FOOD TRUCK TO RESTAURANT IN LESS THAN A YEAR
When Morrison’s Square began redevelopment, Scott Construction and Morrisons Development Ltd saw what the community already knew: Marty’s Meats was the natural choice. From there, we began designing a completely unique burger concept—not just for New Zealand, but globally.
This is where the first chapter ends.
And where the real story of Marty’s Meats is only just beginning…
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