Today we’d like to introduce you to Thomas and Pelinda Deegan.
Pelinda (Mom) was born in the Pampanga province of the Philippines and moved to Southern California when she was little. Tom (Pops) is a New Englander from Meriden, Connecticut. We met, got married, and had our son when we were living in San Francisco.
We made the decision to move to Cape Cod (Tom’s family has ties to the Cape) for what was intended to be a temporary basis in order to be close to family after the birth of our son. After we arrived on Cape Cod, we thought the Cape would be a great place to raise our son, so our temporary move became a permanent one.
Tom was looking for a change from his corporate career of 20 years and he wanted to do something that he was passionate about. He wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but he knew he loved hosting cookouts and eating burgers. Having the help of a close friend and restaurateur in San Francisco whose burger is rated both #1 in San Francisco and #2 in the country, Tom and Pelinda started working on the concept of Mom & Pops Burgers and thought it would be cool to have a burger joint that reflected both their east and west coast backgrounds, with Pelinda’s Filipino influence mixed in. That’s how we came up with Mom & Pops Burgers.
We opened in November 2016 and it’s been a pretty great run so far. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have the support of great friends, family, and staff, without whom we would not be where we are. A great recognition came for us in September 2017 when we were named as the Best Burger on Cape Cod in the Cape Cod Times’ “Top 10” edition.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We are very happy about the road we’ve had and where we are, but any new business has its struggles and we were no different.
First, we were new and our concept is unique for the Cape, and probably for anywhere for that matter. We have burgers and lumpia on our menu, and there aren’t many restaurants that can say that. There were a lot of people who were excited to try something different, but at the same time there were others that were a bit more set in their ways and it took a little time to win them over, but it’s happened.
Second, getting our operation ready for the Summer crush. Summer was like opening all over again as many of the Summer vacationers were trying us for the first time, only this time the crowds were much, much bigger. It was a good thing that we opened in November because it gave us a chance to work out a lot of the kinks before Summer arrived. There’s only so much you can do though to prepare for the crowds though, but we learned a lot, survived and all in all we feel we came out of the Summer in great shape.
Third, overcoming the perception that “we’re just burgers”. The reality is that we put significant time and effort into everything we do, and our goal is the put out the absolute highest quality, best-tasting food possible. This is evident in the steps we take from sourcing our beef from the top meat purveyor in the country to having our own particular blend of beef for our burgers, to butchering and grinding our beef in-house every day. We also cut our own fries and have curated a top-notch craft beer selection. To us, we’re anything but “just burgers”.
Lastly, for some reason, we’ve had a bit of challenge in securing craft beers from a couple of the well known (we won’t name them), harder to come by breweries in the Boston area and we’re not sure why. Our goal is to offer our customers the very best craft beer we can get our hands on, and we’re proud of our fantastic selection. Still, there are a couple that we have been unable to get, but we would love to and our customers would love us too.
Please tell us about Mom & Pops Burgers.
Much of this is answered in the prior question. Frankly, we take pride in everything we do and want everyone’s experience at Mom & Pops to be exceptional. That includes everything from our decor to our customer service, to our social media and our course the quality of our product, whether that product is our burgers, hot dogs, lumpia (Filipino pork egg roll), craft beer selection, etc.
We believe what sets us apart is the amount time, effort and care that goes into our food. We may be a quick service restaurant, but nothing we do when it comes to our food is quick. As mentioned previously, we source the highest quality beef in the market, butcher and grind it in-house and we also cut our own fries. All of this is very labor intensive, but we believe it results in the best product.
Our craft beer selection is the result of a lot of research into breweries and their beers to make sure we’re offering the best product possible. We do not take short-cuts, not even with our chicken tenders, which we bread and fry to order.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Originally we had both wine and craft beer on tap, which required us to purchase a separate refrigeration in order to keep the red wine at a higher temperate than the beer. We ultimately decided to take wine off tap and go strictly with craft beer on tap, so an expensive piece of equipment (the refrigeration for wine) wasn’t necessary.
Operationally, there are things we do, such as butchering and grinding our own beef, cutting our own fries, and making our frappes the old fashioned way in mixers rather than using soft serve that makes things much more complicated and labor intensive for us. Not many, if any quick service models take those kinds of steps. We could have done things differently by buying already processed beef and pre-prepared frozen fries, but that would change who we are, so we never WOULD do those things.
Lastly, this past summer we closed early on Sundays so we were only open for lunch. We’ve learned that during the summer, you need to be open as much as possible so we’ll be open every day for lunch and dinner next summer.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1603 Main Street Chatham, MA 02633
- Website: www.momandpopschatham.com
- Phone: 774.840.4144
- Email: pops@momandpopschatham.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/momandpopschatham/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/momandpopschatham/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mom-and-pops-burgers-chatham
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