Eating Wyoming: Casper’s Little Shop Of Burgers Serves Scary-Good Grub

CASPER — The hook and horror kitsch may bring in the curious but it’s the scary-good grub that keeps Oil City locals and visitors coming back for double and triple features at Little Shop of Burgers, a horror film-themed diner that embraces the macabre and bizarre.

The business axiom of do what you love drives owners Trevor Woodward and Sarah Weikum. And while the theme may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s unique in a town packed with Western-style steakhouses.

Searching for an investment opportunity for her parents, Weikum, who has a background in the food-service industry, and Woodward came up with an idea for a restaurant. But they wanted a theme that stands out.

Both agreed on burgers because “everybody here loves meat,” Woodward said. And Weikum wanted to go back to her childhood love for scary movies.

“The way people react to Halloween in this this town is wild. And just in general, people love Halloween, they love all things horror, they love dressing up, they love the macabre,” she said. “I was like, ‘That’s what we’re doing as a theme because nobody else is doing that.’”

So, in September 2018 they opened Little Shop of Burgers at 1040 N. Center St. based on the 1986 musical horror comedy “Little Shop of Horrors.” The word “burgers” in the logo is a red font with letters that appear to drip blood.

“I liked it as a kid, with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis and the fun music and Audrey II, the big people-eating plant,” Weikum said about what inspired them. “So, that is where I came up with it. I wanted to do a kind of horror-themed name, but have it be all-inclusive. We’ve had some people come in and expect it to be a little shop of horrors theme, but we do it all.”

Horrifying Decor

Walking into the 70-seat burger joint on Casper’s north side, there are posters from nearly a century of horror movies, skeletons, ghouls and an Audrey II replica they call Audrey III.

There is also a menu of 15 burgers and six chicken sandwiches with names such as The Audrey, Tremor, The Fester and the signature burger The Terrence, named after Scary Terry from an animated adult sitcom.

The Terrence is described on the menu as a burger with a “Memphis-style hot rub, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, garlic sauce and bacon.”

All of menu items carry little sidenotes written by Weikum for those wise to the ways of the genre. For example, the side note to The Fester: “You should see the things our uncle can grill. On second thought, you probably don’t want to know.”

The Fester is glazed in homemade barbecue sauce, bacon, cheddar cheese and hand-breaded onion rings.

While the sandwich names flow from a desire to stay with the restaurant theme, the couple are adamant about offering high-quality food.

“We came up with the best burger recipe, what we thought tasted really good,” Weikum said.

The meat comes from a Billings, Montana, source that uses beef from the Rocky Mountain region.

Attention To Detail

The couple mix their patties with an 80% meat, 20% fat ratio and blend in their own seasoning to “give it our flavor that people love and sets us apart.”

They also make their own ketchup, marinara sauce, cheese sauce, sweet sauce, teriyaki sauce, ranch fry sauce, as well as Cajun seasoning, Memphis hot rub and fry salt. A long-term goal is to start marketing and selling their signature sauces and seasoning mixes.

While the couple started with a limited burger menu, customers started asking for chicken sandwiches and organic salad options. Gluten-free buns and vegetarian burgers also are available.

Weikum said the business was just hitting its stride when COVID-19 shut everything down. Government funding for small businesses helped keep them afloat as they sold burgers on a drive-thru basis.

Since then, social media and word of mouth continue to grow the business and bring in people looking to check out the theme and sandwiches.

“It’s just grown substantially and people are coming from all over the world to eat here,” Weikum said. “We had some people from Finland here the other day that came here specifically. They were going to Yellowstone and touring the West and heard of us. So, they made a special trip just to come her to eat. It’s pretty amazing.”

Bacon Cheeseburgers

Woodward said they’ve found that cheeseburgers with bacon — and they offer several — are the biggest sellers. But all the menu options go regularly out in customers’ hands.

“There is not a single item on our menu that doesn’t sell, and I’ve never worked in a kitchen before or anywhere else where everything sold,” he said. “You’d have three or four things that sold every day and then maybe your special. Then you have this other stuff that just kind of goes to waste in the back. We don’t have that problem.”

With a location just north of the current reconstruction of Interstate 25 through Casper, Weikum said they noticed the exit issues and the necessary traffic re-routes hampering the business earlier this year. She put out a plea on social media for businesses on the north side of town not to be forgotten.

“We just reached out and said, ‘Please still support your small local businesses that are down here,’ and it wasn’t just us,” Weikum said. “It was Max’s gas station. The community just showed up around here in crowds and it was amazing.”

The restaurant is a favorite with local high school teams pulling in for meals and families who travel to Casper for sporting events.

“We have had a lot of the people who have performed up at the Ford Wyoming Center order our food and they eat it up there,” Weikum said. “Several of the bands who have come into town have gotten our food, and that really speaks to our local reputation. Those are the people who work at the event center helping us, helping the community by spreading our name.”

Scary Donations

For those who dine in, the restaurant’s “scary” decor continues to evolve as customers who want to clean out their closets or collections of Halloween memorabilia bring it by. Weikum said they have traded food for things like a wearable alien head that was part of a movie set.

The restaurant features a movie room that can be rented for parties and free movies. There’s a collection, but not all the movies shown feature monsters, ghouls, wolfmen or Bela Lugosi, whose poster is on a wall.

“We do kid-friendly stuff,” Woodward said.

The couple, whose three children are involved in the business, said they have no regrets and are optimistic about continued success. Both spend a lot time in the kitchen grilling burgers, preparing the sauces, frying the jalapenos, and making the onion ring batter.

One thing that’s deliberately not scary is the presentation, which they said is part of the winning formula — food that looks as great as it tastes.

“This is our baby. We make sure that every sandwich that comes out, or whatever, is as good as it can be, because people eat with their eyes first,” Woodward said. “We try and make sure that when it comes out your eyes get huge when you look at it.”

And maybe take in the eclectic and fun experience beyond the plate.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.