The signing of the summer has a bun on it: Anton Stach lands at Meat:Stack

Leeds United’s 6ft 4″ Germany midfielder has swapped the training ground for the pass, building his own limited-edition burger at the joint opposite the station — and £2 from every one is going to charity.

Every summer Leeds waits on a signing. This one you can eat.

Meat:Stack, the Newcastle-born, award-winning burger joint on Bishopgate Street, the one you can practically see from the station platforms, is opening the new Premier League season with the thing this city has been craving almost as badly as three points: a burger with Anton Stach’s name on it. Say hello to the Anton Stach Moustachi Cheeseburger, landing on Tuesday 18 August and running through the opening weeks of the campaign before it earns a permanent spot on the menu. A run of form even Daniel Farke would take.

It’s a proper Leeds story, and not just because of who’s on the wrapper. Meat:Stack’s Leeds site sits directly opposite the station, which for most of the past year has meant sitting directly opposite a building site. The station redevelopment has choked the footfall past its door for months, a brutal welcome for one of the city’s best-loved independents. The Stach Burger is the comeback: a way for Meat:Stack to remind Leeds it’s still very much open, and for a Premier League player to throw his weight behind a business fans already know and love.

And there’s a cause riding on it. £2 from every Stach Burger sold goes to the Elhadj Diouf Foundation (EDF), a charity Anton has worked with for years and one his family have poured their hearts into for close to three decades. So the maths is easy: big burger, good cause, no downside.

He actually made it

Here’s the part that lifts this above the usual name-on-a-menu deal. Stach didn’t just lend the burger his signature — on Monday 10 August he rolled up his sleeves in the Meat:Stack kitchen and built the thing himself. Germany international one day, on the pass the next.

Then, on launch day, he’s back on Bishopgate Street to do it in public. From Tuesday 18 August the man himself returns to meet fans, sign autographs and serve the very first Stach Burgers by hand. It’s free to come along, the queue forms opposite the station, and like a corner in the 94th minute, the burgers are strictly first-come, first-served.

“We’ve had a proper baptism of fire, opening up opposite a building site, but Leeds has kept turning up for us, and this is our way of turning up for Leeds. Anton’s a giant on the pitch and, it turns out, no slouch with a spatula. The Moustachi Cheeseburger is big, it’s bold, and every single one puts £2 into a cause his family have poured their hearts into for nearly 30 years. Come and get one.” — Allan Hyslop, founder, Meat:Stack

For General Manager Callan Hornsby, it started as something simpler: getting people back to the door. “The building work outside has made life hard for us this year, so I wanted to do something that brought people back,” he says. “Anton was brilliant about it. A Premier League player giving his time to help a local restaurant get back on its feet says everything about where his head is at, and about this city right now.”

Home from home

The name, for the record, is a wink. The “Moustachi” is a nod to Stach’s own YouTube channel, proof the man has a sense of humour to match the frame. More than that, though, it reads like someone who’s actually settled in. Stach signed for Leeds from Bundesliga side Hoffenheim, and by the sound of it the city did its job quickly.

“Leeds has felt like home from very early on, and a lot of that is the people and the places around the ground — the businesses fans go to before and after a game. Meat:Stack is one of them, and they’ve had a hard time with the building work on their doorstep. This is a team on the rise in a city on the comeback, and support has to go both ways. I wanted to back a business Leeds fans care about, and raising money for a foundation my family has given so much to at the same time means everything. I’ll be there on the 18th — bring your appetite.” — Anton Stach, Leeds United and Germany midfielder

Team on the rise, city on the comeback, independent digging in opposite a building site and a big German midfielder happy to grab a spatula for the cause. If you were writing the perfect start-of-season Leeds story, it would look a lot like this.

Bring your appetite, bring your mates, and this being a first-come, first-served affair, maybe get there early (Time to be announced on socials).