Real Food Fast - b. good Coming to Burlington

Everyone knows you can get a burger and fries pretty much everywhere now-a-days. Finding a fresh, healthy, and more importantly, tasty burger - now that is a challenge.

Enter Jon Olinto and Anthony Ackil, Co-Founders of b. good, a unique  restaurant that wants to take the fast of fast food, but leave behind all the unhealthy aspects associated with other popular chains.

b. good started as a business venture between Olinto and Ackil, who have been friends since childhood. A failed business venture in high school disappointed the pair, but didn't deter their efforts for long. After graduating Colby and Harvard respectively, Olinto and Ackil entering the white-collar world of management consulting. Five years down the line, Olinto and Ackil were ready to get behind another self-made business venture. What was born out of the pairs collaboration was b. good and the idea of real food fast.

“At b. good, it's really more about our philosophy behind cooking and the business we want to create than anything else,” explains Olinto. “We want to make fast food real, to give transparency to everything we serve.”

b. good's model for the perfect burger begins with all-natural beef from local farmers out of Maine. The cows they use for their meats are raised with no anti-biotics or unnatural hormones, living primarily on grass their entire lives.

“If you look at other places, you don't exactly know where everything is coming from,” said Olinto. “We know everything that happens to our burgers and want our customers to know.”

Everything else on the b. good menu, from fries to salads, come from local farms with shipments coming fresh every morning. Ice cream and milk shakes come from the popular parlor in Cambridge, Toscanini's which the New York Times unabashedly called, “the best ice cream in the world.”

The food fresh and supports local, small farmers in the Massachusetts area. The real question is, how does it taste?

“The most important thing to us at the end of the day is that our food has to taste great,” explained Olinto. “When you work with local farms [ingredients] are as fresh as can be, this translates into the best product you can put out.”

Almost a decade later and now up to seven b. good's throughout the Greater Boston area, the pair are coming to 82 Mall Road (across from Lahey Clinic) with their eighth restaurant.

“The way we learn and look at b. good is: the more we learn about the business and what people want, the more b. good improves,” explained Olinto, detailing b. good's success with evolving to meet customer demands. “There is a big learning curve in the food industry.”

b. good is not all burgers though. For this time of year, Olinto recommends a pair of salads (Tomato Mozzarella or Strawberry Goat Cheese) because the vegetables are at the height of their season.

Other menu items as b. good include: fruit shakes, special seasonal shakes, chicken, veggie and turkey burgers, fresh spreads like avocado, homemade jalapeño ranch, corn salsa, and a host of fresh vegetables from onions to carrots, corn to mushrooms. Top this off with either regular or sweet potato fries (or perhaps crisped broccoli and red peppers on the side) and you can see why b. good isn't just your average burger joint.

“We are pysched ot be in Burlington,” said Olinto. “I think it's going to be a really great fit for us.”

The 82 Mall Road b. good location in Burlington will be open, “in about a month,” as construction wraps up, Olinto said.

For more information on b. good, please visit their website at www.bgood.com. Click here for a behind the scenes video of the Harvard b. good chefs in action.

If you want to taste some b. good before it hits Burlington, join Olinto and Ackil down on the Burlington Commons, today, Sept. 10 from 4-6 p.m. as part of the .