05/10/2026
This was Marty’s Meats Smash Burgers 2 years ago and now 🍟🍔
This looks crazy, that just 2 years ago Marty’s Meats was just a dream of one guy, planting trees in forestry from Monday till Saturday and fixing old foodtruck on Sunday’s with a help of his friend Jamie. At the time Marty’s Meats was just known as our BBQ group of friends.
How did Marty’s Meats start?
Obsession with meat and cooking was strong since childhood growing up in Czech Republic, father was a butcher, mother had restaurants, so he grew up around meat and in the kitchens, as well as grand parents farm. So love for art of butchery, farm grown produce and from the scratch cooking started early. After finishing hospitality high school in Czech, he worked at bars and restaurants, or hotel in Greece.
After moving to NZ and 13 years of hard forestry work, and rural firefighter, Marty’s way to relax in the weekends was to throw BBQ for fellow forestry workers and friends (7 years in Blenheim, 6 years in Nelson).
How did Marty’s Meats started? He got logo of Marty’s Meats Barbecue with T-shirts printed by his BBQ group for 30-th birthday and that was birth of Marty’s Meats.
After 3rd surgery and million planted trees decision was made to retire from forestry and start Marty’s Meats. So we started contacting Councils, private land owners, pub owners. To our surprise, there was “No space available in Nelson or Tasman”, we tried over 50 locations. So Marty said “Let’s open ambitious burger truck where nobody would, mince aged meat ourselves, figure out fermented hand cut fries, create unique combinations of burgers and put it in the middle of industrial zone. If we were to make it, we have to make it anywhere”. So after 50+ NO’s, we got Yes from Sarah from Zoom Car rental, that’s all we needed 🙏🍔🍟
Over 2 years and 50 000+ burgers later, Marty’s Meats is in two locations, made it through tough winter (just), feeds hundreds of people a day, is ultimate reward after work for many, destination to travel for others and place of work for dozens in summer. Maybe even changed the way people think about burger, that it is a food item deserving the best ingredients and it can be fine experience without breaking a bank, Marty’s was made for all classes. It started as one guys dream shared by a loyal wife, but Marty’s is no longer one guy thing. ♥️
Little appreciation post for all of our loyal customers, that saw potential when others said NO, to all future entrepreneurs to not listen to NO. To all suppliers that made it work with us, to all our workers trying to make the best burger one by one every single day and understand our obsession. 🙏🥩🍔🍟 THANK YOU!
Foodtruck back at it tomorrow Wed-Sun 11:30am-8pm 🥳
C*D back Wed-Sun 12-8pm 😊