Owner of Britain's cheapest burger from Telford reveals how he still sells them for just £1 after 20 years

The owner of Britain's cheapest burger has revealed how he has managed to keep the price at just £1 despite soaring costs over the last two decades.

Chris Higgitt, 58, who previously worked as a processing and quality engineer in Telford, Shropshire, runs Higgitt's Las Vegas Arcade and £1 Burger Bar in Blackpool. The popular burger stand has been serving £1 burgers since 2006 and continues to attract huge crowds.

Nestled behind Blackpool's bustling promenade, the business has become a local institution, with customers regularly queuing for more than an hour to get their hands on one of the famous burgers.

The £1 burger includes a bun, an English beef patty, onions and sauce. Despite rising costs for ingredients, electricity and other overheads, Chris says careful planning and hard work have allowed him to keep prices unchanged.

Chris said: "I am very proud of being able to keep the price for this long, but for me it all comes to hard work and dedication.

"It is more popular than ever. Where else will you see someone queue over an hour for one?

"People love the burgers and the business and I have designed it to be as efficient as possible - I don't think there is anything more I can do."

After moving to Blackpool in 2003, Chris and his wife Karen, 61, initially ran a bed and breakfast. In 2006 they bought an arcade, and an off-the-cuff conversation about adding a burger bar changed everything.

Chris said: "The arcade wasn't performing very well and Karen and I were talking about what we could do and we thought of a burger bar.

"So from this off-the-cuff conversation, I sat down and did the maths and figured out I could sell them for £1."

While business was slow at first, word quickly spread and the burger operation soon overtook the B&B as the family's main source of income.

Today, social media has helped fuel even greater demand, with TikTok creators and YouTubers regularly featuring the bargain burgers in their videos.

Open seven days a week from March until November, Chris says each burger costs around 50p to make, including ingredients and electricity.

Drawing on his engineering background, he designed and built the kitchen himself, creating an efficient production-line layout that allows him to prepare a burger every 20 seconds.

He said: "I treat it like a production line moving from right to left.

"On the far right is where the barm cakes are, then is the hot plate where I cook everything.

"Then there is the bain-marie which I am constantly feeding and then is the serving counter.

"Everything is in reaching distance - it has all been placed specifically so I can knock them out very quickly."

Chris credits two key factors for his success: increasing customer numbers and buying ingredients in bulk.

He said: "Electricity prices have risen considerably since I started 20 years ago but I have gotten around this by increasing footfall.

"I run a social media page where I give people an insight into my life and the business, and I have grown a huge community.

"I am always welcoming to food YouTubers or TikTokers who come along and record themselves trying the burger.

"This in turn brings people to try it themselves or just to see me and enjoy the buzz of the place."

Bulk buying also helps keep costs down. Chris orders 5,000 burgers at a time, enough to last only a week during the busiest summer periods.

Fresh buns are delivered weekly, while he stocks up on products including Spam, soft drinks, onions and slush mix in large quantities to secure better prices.

He currently has more than 5,000 tins of Spam in storage, enough to last the entire season.

Another cost-saving measure is that Chris runs the burger operation single-handedly, serving customers and managing the long queues himself.

Although he still operates the arcade, Chris says around 90 per cent of his revenue now comes from the burger business, which also sells hot dogs, Spam barms and sausage barms alongside its famous £1 burger.