Instafamous burger joint to open soon

AN Australian burger franchise which has hosted A-list celebrities and originated at Bondi Beach in 2016 will be opening a store in Bendigo later this month.

The last of its four founders, Christian Avant, said the new site has been in the works for three years, due to working through heritage-building requirements at the Lyttleton Terrace location.

“The idea was just to create a burger and cocktail experience with a difference,” said Mr Avant.

“I guess, in a saturated market at the time when everyone was doing burgers, we kind of took it to the next level, we owned that whole food-porn social media space as it started to boom.

“Everything we were creating and making just went viral, we’ve had Ed Sheeran, Post Malone in, everybody, it was just a phenom.

“And then enquiries came through to franchise and to scale and grow across Australia.”

There’s nothing like it anywhere else in the country, according to Mr Avant, who said there will be DJs on weekends playing nostalgic hip hop and R’n’B.

“What we do is an experience, it’s a night out, a celebration,” he said.

“It’s not somewhere where people just duck in and out for a feed, people come to Milky Lane for a night out.

“Everything in Milky Lane is kind of like feel good, throwback.”

Milky Lane’s success came as no surprise to Mr Avant, because he said he “saw the hype around it.”

“At the Bondi Store, people were driving seven or eight hours from almost Queensland to get to Bondi to eat, and it was crazy,” he said.

Mr Avant said after the opening of the Bendigo store the company will be looking to launch a range of signature cocktail cans at liquor stores at the end of the year.

Milky Lane Bendigo will open on Monday 25 September.