The Halloween cover set is one of the finest spooky season traditions we have. You know: Your friend's band puts on their Kurt Cobain flannels, your other friend's band spends a whole month learning Slipknot songs, and they play someone's basement with "The Cure" and "Kiss." It's the best.
A few years ago, Jon Wipfli started doing the same thing with Animales Barbeque Co. Each Halloween, for one special day, his BBQ trailer dresses up as McJonald's—with Mickey D's uniforms and everything—and spends the day slinging their take on Big Macs and McRibs.
"The first year we bought, like, 700 burger patties, and I was like, 'There's no way we're gonna sell 700 burgers,'" Wipfli says.
They were gone in three hours.
"Last year when we did it, I bought 1,500 burger patties, and again, I was like, 'There's no way we're gonna sell 1,500 burgers.'" Those lasted a little longer, but not by much—he guesses they were gone in five hours the second time around.
This year he went big—2,500 burgers—and they'll be selling them out of the new Animales Burger Co. trailer at Bauhaus from 2-10 p.m. Saturday.
On one hand, that's a lot of burgers. On the other hand, Bauhaus is throwing its own Halloween bash... all I'm saying is, if you want to get in on one of the 45-ish available McRibs—made with bone-in Peterson Craftsman Meats ribs on a house-made cornmeal bun—you're going to want to show up early. Preferably in costume.
But that's not all! Over at the original home of Animales, Able Seedhouse + Brewery, they'll be cosplaying as Jimmy Jon's from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. They've got brined, smoked turkey sandwiches, and Peterson ham and salami sandwiches. Everything comes on a handmade roll with chips.
Perhaps you're thinking to yourself, "Gee, what a great idea—I wonder why more restaurants don't do this!" Well folks, two of Animales' neighbors on their stretch of Quincy Street in Northeast have: MN Nice Cream did a DQ-adjacent pop-up, and last February, Centro turned into Centro Bell for an event at Able. ("They actually asked me, they were like, 'We're just gonna copy you, is that OK?' And I was like, 'Yeah, of course.'")
"People seem to get really excited about it, so we love doing it. When people get excited, we get excited—it's just fun," Wipfli says. "Hopefully we won't get a cease and desist. That would really ruin the whole thing."
