Mayor Don Plusquellic today announced a new national event that will be coming to downtown Akron, sandwiched between spring and summer over Memorial Day weekend 2005.

The City has committed to hosting the National Hamburger Festival in celebration of the 120^th Anniversary of the invention of the popular sandwich credited to Akron’s Menches Brothers in 1885. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the nation are expected, and vendors will be competing for prizes.

On May 28^th, National Hamburger Day, Akron, Ohio Mayor Don Plusquellic announced that the National Hamburger Festival will be held in Downtown Akron next year on Memorial Day weekend 2005 to celebrate the 120^th Anniversary of the invention of the hamburger.

Akron, the home of the hamburger’s inventors, the Menches Brothers, will finally celebrate its culinary contribution to the rest of the world. Wisconsin has a cheese festival; Buffalo, NY has a chicken wing festival. Why shouldn’t Akron celebrate with a hamburger festival?

Mayor Don Plusquellic said, "It’s great for us to see our resurgent downtown attract this kind of attention and to see real validation for the origin of the most popular sandwich in America."

It’s truly as American as apple pie. But why do we call it a hamburger? It’s an amazing tale of accidental discovery by two brothers from Ohio who concocted chopped and fried beef to satisfy fair-goers in Hamburg, New York back in 1885. Charles and Frank Menches, Akron businessmen brought their food concession to the Erie County Agricultural Fair in Hamburg, NY in the summer of 1885. The brothers were famous for their delicious sausage sandwiches.

When they ran out of pork for their sausage patty sandwiches, Frank turned to a neighboring meat market for help. The market also exhausted its pork supply but obliged the two brothers with five pounds of beef. A few patties were fried up for their own taste and it was decided the concoction might sell if spiked with a little brown sugar and coffee. The sandwich was so overwhelmingly popular that when asked the name of it, they declared it would be named the hamburg after the city in which it was born. The rest is history.

The festival will be held over Memorial Day weekend in 2005 in Downtown Akron. Up to 40 of America’s premier hamburger eateries from across the country will be invited to participate and serve up their version of the culinary delicacy. A national hamburger eating contest will be held with participants from all over the country. There will also be an amateur hamburger cooking contest to see who can take the claim of the best traditional and creative hamburger recipe.

There will be several additional contests including a Miss Hamburger pageant and a Baby Burger contest for kids. Live entertainment will be featured throughout the weekend.

Grandson’s Tom and John Menches along with granddaughter Judy Menches-Kusmits have kept the burger tradition alive and well at their two Menches Brothers Restaurants located in Akron, as the descendants of these colorful Ohioans serve-up their ancestors’ original burger recipe, including a little brown sugar and coffee.

Judy Menches-Kusmits commented, "In 1991, we made the decision to bring back our famous burger and teach the world the true story of how one of our most popular foods got its start. The Memorial Day 2005 event will be dedicated to Charles and Frank."

Folks come from near and far to pay homage to the Menches Brothers Hamburger. Ohio has a rich tradition with the hamburger as it is also the home to fast food giants Wendy’s and White Castle.

The festival is the brainchild of Drew Cerza, Founder of the National Chicken Wing Festival in Buffalo New York. Mayor Plusquellic and his staff will work closely with Cerza’s company, RMI Promotions Group to make the festival an annual event.

"I was so impressed after meeting the Menches, I felt they deserved to take claim to the hamburger with a festival similar to Buffalo taking claim to the chicken wing," said Cerza.