When is a restaurant more than a restaurant? When it’s a laboratory to build a national chain.

While the Grind Modern Burger team is happy to be building in Boise, their aim is to share their restaurant concept with the world.

“When we launched here it was to build a prototype restaurant that we could replicate,” says Rick Boyd, a partner in the gourmet burger restaurant and its sister company, Post Modern Brewers. “We’ve looked at places like Seattle, Denver and throughout California. There’s a lot of opportunity for something that bridges the white table, craft beer and cocktail worlds — all rolled into one concept.”

The result is a menu that takes a new look at old favorites. Burgers? Yes, but hand-ground with gourmet cuts. Beer? Yes, but also beer cocktails that combine familiar ingredients into a highly sensory experience. Then there’s the hard root beer and even hard ginger ale from Postmodern Brewers.

It’s a recipe that has garnered the attention of national media, including a mention as Idaho’s Best Burger from Business Insider.

And while business is going strong at their new location on the corner of Capitol Boulevard and Fulton Street in downtown Boise — in a space that for more than two decades was occupied by TableRock Brewpub — the journey to creating this culinary laboratory was something of a winding path.

It starts with Rick, a professional sales guy and beer lover with a restaurant background, who decided to leave his day job and start Brewforia.com, a beer-themed gift basket business. That company eventually spun off a couple of related projects, including beer festivals in Boise and across the Northwest as well as a Brewforia retail operation that served and sold speciality beers from around the world.

Looking to expand, Rick and longtime collaborator Ryan Hembree (now the executive chef and a partner in Grind), opened a new location in Eagle. But it didn’t go over well.

“The Brewforia concept didn’t work well in Eagle,” Ryan says. “We were too international. Eagle diners are meat and potato-eating families. We didn’t even have a kids menu.”

So the team reevaluated their options and tweaked the menu, led by their star seller: The Grind Burger.

“We basically take all the components of a backyard burger and give them a modern twist,” Ryan explains. “Instead of pickle and onions, we have pickled onions. Instead of sliced tomatoes, we have tomato confit.”

About this time, creative consultant, amateur foodie and now restaurant investor Dusty Schmidt walked in and tried the burger.

“I was just so impressed,” says Dusty, who spent much of his career in marketing and creative production for leading cable networks, but who now spends his time helping launch businesses he’s passionate about, including Boise’s Payette Brewing and Woodland Empire. “I knew they had something here and decided to email Rick and offer to help if they ever decided to expand.”

Several months later, Rick reached out. The two initially discussed ideas for a reality TV show, but instead decided to pursue what would become Grind Modern Burger with the goal of taking the concept to a wider audience.

“None of us are in this to operate just one restaurant,” Dusty says.

Part of that growth, the team hopes, will come from the expansion of the fully independent, but closely related Post Modern Brewers.

“We spun it off so we could grow it separately,” Rick says of Post Modern. “We have a good plan for how to grow it that is different than many other microbrews.” This plan, Rick says, involved some key distribution strategies and a commitment to what the team believes will be an up-and-coming market segment: hard soda.

Hard soda carries many of the traditional soda flavors, but with a bit of an alcoholic kick.

“The hard soda market doesn’t really exist. There are small companies in the UK and Australia, but in general, it’s a new thing.”

In addition to finding it on the Grind menu, Post Modern’s hard ginger ale and hard root beer are also cropping up on other restaurant menus. You’ll find them as part of a Moscow Mule or even playful adults-only root beer floats.

“We’re serious about food and beverage,” says Rick. “But we’re not snobby about it.”

Note: Learn more about Grind Modern Burger at grindmodernburger.com. Or taste Post Modern brews for yourself at The Mode, Big Al’s, The Reef, and Fork, among others.

Photography by Joe Jaszewski