The Half Eaten Cookie Hospitality Group — founded by Bryan Dayton and known for Boulder’s fine-dining spots Oak at Fourteenth and the Spanish-inspired Corrida — has added another name to its family of Boulder restaurants: C Burger.
Tapping into his other outlets’ existing supply chain for regeneratively raised beef, Dayton said they wanted to offer something different from the high-end culinary experience found at most of their other locations. C Burger’s Boulder restaurant, located on Pearl Street between 9th and 10th streets, is their second location — but the first standalone spot.
The concept first launched at Sanitas Brewing Company’s Englewood tasting room in June 2023, where they opened a kiosk with a short menu focused on pairing high quality with a competitive price.
“We just want to have a good, fun little space where, in today’s marketplace, you can get something that doesn’t break the checkbook at all,” he said. “It’s definitely really good, really tasty and not overly complicated — and we’re trying to keep it that way.”
The menu includes five burger options, a couple of pasture-raised chicken choices and several salads. The beef comes from Dayton’s brand, Corrida Cattle Company, which works primarily with Western States Ranches on the Western Slope to source environmentally conscious meat.
The regenerative practices used to raise the beef offer a more holistic approach to grazing, known as AMP (adaptive multi-paddock) grazing. Animals stay on a piece of land for a shorter time, allowing it to rest longer, leading to healthier pastures, increased biodiversity, improved water retention and more carbon sequestered in the ground. The result: healthier animals and fresher meat with better traceability and a shorter supply chain.
“Pretty simple: We just want to do good, tasty burgers that are Colorado beef, regeneratively raised. It’s good for the planet, and you can feel good about eating bad,” Dayton said. “The biggest part for us is being stewards of the land.”
Dayton said part of the impetus for starting a hamburger restaurant was their whole-animal approach to sourcing and butchering — and the large proportion of meat that ends up as ground beef.
“It was really a holistic approach to whole-animal butchery,” he said. “And then on top of that, having a bigger lens where it vertically integrated into our whole system. So it’s the same quality that we serve at Corrida, just in a different format.”
C Burger also features a full bar with an all-Colorado lineup of beers and a mostly Colorado selection of spirits. (They couldn’t find a canned wine they liked in the size they wanted.)
“We’re trying to use as many Colorado products as we can,” Dayton said. He added that they’re trying to price everything competitively with the fast-casual market so more people can try their beef and support the broader cause of regenerative ranching.
Burgers start at $8 for a single patty with American cheese, pickles, ketchup, mustard, lettuce and optional C Burger sauce, with veggie patty or portobello substitutions available. Doubles start at $11, and signature burgers — including one with Swiss cheese and tallow mushroom sauce; one with American cheese, bacon, crispy onions and BBQ sauce; and the C Burger with American cheese, bacon, crispy jalapeños and green chile sauce — start at $10.50 for singles.
They also offer chicken bites and a fried chicken sandwich, along with a grilled chicken salad, Caesar salad and a namesake C Salad with cucumber, chickpeas, salami and mozzarella in red wine vinegar. Sides are sold separately, including house-made tallow fries, herbed fries, loaded cheese fries and local potato chips.
“Our pricing is very aggressive and we have thin margins on it, ’cause we are buying premium beef,” he said.
While they’re still focused on refining the new space, Dayton said he sees this as the first step toward opening more C Burger locations.
“I think the first brick-and-mortar here will be the real test — that proof of concept,” he said. “Definitely in the future I’d love to get more, do more of these locally — little burger joint, for sure.”
C Burger is open at 921 Pearl Street from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.