Dear Burgerville Community,
I want to start with a heartfelt thank you to you, our neighbors, for being part of Team Burgerville through these challenging weeks. You have supported our employees and Northwest farmers, ranchers and food producers by coming to your neighborhood Burgerville drive thru, ordering online, or getting delivery through DoorDash. And you have tipped your servers generously. Thank you.
The current state of the world has been unpredictable, unprecedented and heartbreaking. As more information has become available, we recognize, now more than ever, what our responsibility is during this pandemic: to ensure that our region’s hard-working front-line first responders, families, and community members have healthy, local food available to them. And we plan to do just that! 38 Burgervilles will remain open to our community and to serve with love, because we remain committed to those words, even in the mist of uncertainty and while making hard decisions.
With our dining rooms temporarily closed, we are deeply saddened to announce the need to place 68% of our workforce on full or partial furlough. Every restaurant was impacted, as was every member of our corporate office. We are also temporarily closing three locations: PDX Airport, Tigard Signature, and the B-side food cart.
If will, hard work, and love alone could keep all Burgervilles open and jobs filled, we would not be making these changes. The dedication and grit of our employees in these past weeks has kept our grills hot and guests smiling, even during remarkably tense times. If our founder, Jacob Propstra, who started the Holland Creamery in 1922, could see what we have created, he would be amazed.
There is no playbook for these very challenging times. My promise to the community – employees, our farmers and ranchers, and guests – is we will continue to be nimble and keep our company moving into a new future. While there are certainly more tough times ahead, we intend to do all that is in our power to keep each other healthy and safe, and weather this storm together, as one company and one resilient Pacific Northwest region.
Jill Taylor
CEO, Burgerville