When Justin Hughes of BlackHorn Burgers saw Rob Ogle’s incredible sand creations, he knew that was how he wanted to announce the relaunch of his restaurant.
A spectacular piece of sand artistry “popped up” last week on St Andrews East Sands beach to announce the reopening of a popular Fife burger joint.
After being closed since the end of last year, BlackHorn Burgers revealed its doors would be opening again with the help of sand artist Rob Ogle, who describes himself as “just a man with a rake”.
Rob, 35, who hails from Portland, Oregon, and now lives in north east Fife with his wife Hailey and four-year-old son Hudson, spent three hours crafting the spectacle.
And customers of BlackHorn loved his unique way of revealing the restaurants plans to open again at their Church Street base.
Fantastic
Owner Justin Hughes was thrilled with the creation which had people responding in numbers on their social media feeds.
“It was really fantastic what happened. We were really impressed with it,” he said.
“We have been closed since just before Christmas due to the restrictions. We did think about opening back up, but we didn’t think we would be able to get quite enough people in to keep us going.
“We have had everyone on furlough which has been quite difficult because we wanted the staff to be in doing their jobs and people enjoying BlackHorn, but we had to try and put everything into perspective and do the right thing for everyone.”
Having seen a previous piece of sand artistry by Rob, they knew right away that one of his creations would be perfect for the BlackHorn relaunch.
“When we heard that the restrictions were going to start to ease we thought we would try and get BlackHorn back open.
“We saw on the BBC news app when Tiger Woods had been in hospital that Rob Ogle had done a sand thing for him so we had the idea to use it as our kind of big opening picture and video because he uses drones,” added Justin.
“I think it took him about three hours. It is incredible. We were so happy with it. We didn’t really say we wanted specific things, we gave him a rough idea of the writing with our catchphrase and we left the rest to him, it was just incredible.”
Crazy
Justin continued: “Our Instagram totally went crazy with lots of people responding to it, saying how amazing it was. So many people were commenting and it was really, really nice and it means he got the recognition. A lot more people will see his stuff and maybe use him as well.”
And opening over the weekend went extremely well, with customers clearly happy to have BlackHorn back, as they sold out on Sunday.
Justin continued: “We opened on Friday and are only opening Fridays to Sundays 10 am to 8pm just now until we can see how busy we are.
“It went really well. On Sunday we were sold out before dinner time and we had to close early which was a bit of a shame, but we were sold out so we couldn’t complain.
“It is quite hard to estimate how much you are going to need for a weekend when you haven’t been open for four months. The team all worked really hard and I think everyone was really pleased.
“We would really like to be back full-time and having people in. We are a busy restaurant, quite loud, and people are always up and about, and we have the outside bit as well at the back. It’s always been a busy wee place so it’s been quite sad not being allowed to have anyone in at all.”
Fed the rugby boys
BlackHorn also has a trailer which they use for outdoor events and it managed to get a run-out last week when they fed the Scottish rugby players ahead of their Six Nations clash with Ireland at the weekend.
“We have our trailer as well which we use for the outdoor university events but they have been cancelled, although we did have it out on Wednesday when we fed the Scotland rugby team which was really good as well,” revealed Justin.
“Because they are in their own bubble in the hotel, they have had different people serving them food with some dinner and we were asked to go on Wednesday and took our big truck.
“They all came out a couple at a time, masks and social distancing, and we got to feed them. So it was really nice to get the trailer out as well.”
