The weekend of May 8 will be the last for Mad River Valley smash burger biz Peace Burger at its location inside Afterthoughts, a Waitsfield venue and bar. A menu of fast-food and classic drive-in favorites will be available for dinner, with a “fryer sale” of one-off specials, to use up the restaurant’s food before it closes, owner Aaron Zurcher said.
Zurcher launched Peace Burger as a pop-up in spring 2024 and opened at Afterthoughts in January 2025. The business started as a way for the remote-working creative director to “find a sense of place and belonging,” Zurcher said, adding that in that respect, “it’s been such a success.”
But business was random and inconsistent, he continued, even accounting for the valley’s seasonal traffic fluctuations. And as a food biz within a bar, Peace Burger saw no income from alcohol sales — a lifeline for restaurants as costs rise.
In an April 20 Instagram post, Zurcher wrote that he didn’t expect to open the following weekend due to low sales. The post went viral, and customers rallied and made contributions. After meeting with several experienced restaurateurs to go through his financials, Zurcher decided to close the Waitsfield location for good.
He thanked Afterthoughts for giving him “an opportunity to come in there and do something with our brand” and lamented that “I couldn’t keep financially supporting what [the business] needed to keep growing.”
Zurcher will take a break to find outside work. But he plans to keep the Peace Burger name out there by hosting pop-ups again starting in midsummer — two or three per month.
Next fall or winter, he hopes to raise enough money to open a “full version of Peace Burger” in a new location, Zurcher said, adding, “I feel like this is how Peace Burger actually becomes what it was supposed to be.”
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