PORTLAND, Ore. — There's more than just tasty, unique ingredients behind one popular burger joint's skyrocketing success, and a Portland organization dedicated to molding successful youth has a lot to do with it.
R&B throwbacks set the vibe as a steady stream of customers flow into the bright, breezy space and scan a menu full of comical names and unique combinations.
“Stoopid means fresh,” Stoopid Burger co-owner John Hunt said. "We like to be not just a regular hamburger but a stoopid burger.”
Sizzling smells of bacon, onion and homemade fries waft from the back where Hunt and their cooks create masterpieces.
Hunt co-founded Stoopid Burger with his friend Danny Moore in 2014.
"From a food cart to a brick-and-mortar. It's really been a dream come true,” Hunt said.
A decade ago, he didn't see himself doing this.
"I knew I was going to be successful. Sometimes I doubted myself but I never really gave up," he said. "But, I didn't know I'd be doing hamburgers or something like that."
Hunt comes from humble beginnings, and didn't have much growing up. But he was set on being someone, even when he lost his way.
"I kind of got off track, started hanging around the wrong crowd, wanted to make a little extra money, so I started selling drugs," Hunt said.
He says the money was nice, but then his grades started slipping. School was put on the back burner and he almost dropped out.
He got caught up in the criminal justice system, and says he had been arrested.
“I had a record when I was 17. It kind of affected me when I was 18, 19, 20. I couldn’t get good jobs, so I... worked at a car wash for seven years.”
Eventually, something clicked and Hunt decided to turn his life around.
"That’s just not the way to do it. I would tell people to stay in school, do it the right way. Because I got lucky. Because I’ve seen a lot of my friends die, people I know went to jail for a long time that’s in my circle. So I’m one of the ones that made it out."
Hunt made it out with support of friends and family, and because of Rosemary Anderson High School (RAHS), where a good friend told him to enroll.
Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC) runs the schools. The organization is committed to building successful youth through mentoring, employment training and placement, and education.
"As I started to develop relationships with some of the staff and teachers, things started working out for me. I started focusing on points I needed to focus on, getting credits and all that good stuff up. Next thing you know, pretty soon I graduated. So it was just a big success, like I went from not being able to graduate on time to finishing on time with my diploma," Hunt told KGW.
Hunt says he wouldn't have accomplished all those milestones in school if he didn't join POIC and attend Rosemary Anderson. It gave him the second chance he needed.
"In high school, you get so far behind to where it gets discouraging and you just don’t care. So, POIC, it gives people second chances."
Hunt wouldn't be at a highly-reviewed burger spot in Northeast Portland, cooking up stupidly delicious fresh food, it wasn't for his second chance.
"I'm just proud that I made the right changes and worked hard. And I had something I believed in and I put my all into it. And now I'm here,” Hunt said.
On top of running a top-notch joint, he is still involved in POIC and speaks to students whose classroom seats he once sat in.
"It’s real amazing to go back in the same classrooms and hallways that I used to be running around there. Now, I can go back and tell them they can make it,” Hunt said.
Hunt says he and Moore's goal is to open at least 10 more Stoopid Burgers, including one in Las Vegas.