Heffer's Retro Fast Food + Beefy Burgers Hits Stratford with More Locations Coming Soon?

Heffer’s namesake burger is a single patty of their house-ground beef blend with a slice of ripe tomato, American cheese, Heffer Sauce, and homemade bacon-onion jam.

The term “well-traveled” as it pertains to the restaurant industry is fitting for Steve Barone. Before opening the fast casual Heffer in Stratford in 2025, he’d been around the block and back again. Name a restaurant and he’ll probably come back with, “Yeah, I worked there for a bit.”

Prior to launching his concept of burgers, fried chicken, hot dogs, and homemade sides, sauces, and desserts at Heffer, you might’ve spotted Barone as the operating partner of Fairfield’s Il Pellicano, general manager at Saltaire Oyster Bar in Port Chester, and everywhere in north or south of both of those, as he’s designed beverage programs in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island. Safe to say that he’s made you a drink somewhere or you’ve had a cocktail that he created.

Turn back the clock a lot more and Barone wasn’t in the industry at all.

“I worked retail, selling women’s shoes at Sears,” he says. “My grandmother, Dottie, who raised me, called me Al Bundy. I was interested in something different. This local Mexican spot was hiring for waiters, so I went, interviewed, they liked me, I liked them. I never heard back! I never gave the industry another thought. Eventually, they called me, saying they forgot, asking me if I wanted to bartend instead. I don’t know why I said yes. I didn’t know how to mix a drink.”

He didn’t know it then, but that one “yes” sparked his entire career leading to where he is now as a co-owner of something he dreamt up.

“I wrote bar programs all over and wrote the book that bartending schools in Connecticut taught from—I was the director of that curriculum for eight years and worked directly with Diageo,” Barone says. “I just wasn’t bartending age anymore, so I transitioned to the admin side 10 years ago. My role always involved development, so why am I doing this for someone else?”

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Barone (left) and husband, Kevin Palma, who runs the show in the kitchen, pose inside of Heffer on Stratford’s Main Street, a big difference from where Barone started (see above!).

During COVID, Barone wrote a concept that he called “Hen and Heffer,” a fast-food spot with an emphasis on southern fried chicken, burgers, and sides like mac & cheese, cornbread, and hand cut fries.

In 2022, Hen and Heffer went live as a janky pop up.

“When I worked with Saltaire, I was going to do this with them as a brick-and-mortar that was more elevated, but I leaned intro retro fast food, and never executed the ghost kitchen version of it, but I held onto the idea,” Barone explains. “I did it as a pop up literally out of a shed in the wood in Wolcott. The health department said I needed to have windows and couldn’t dump into a dry well that I dug myself.”

Big Fat Hen - southern fried chicken breast, red slaw, Heffer Sauce, pickles

An appetizer or a dessert? Cornbread donuts fresh from the oven that come with a side of house-infused hot honey.

Southern fried tenders with Heffer Sauce and sweet & spicy hot honey

Three years later, when the space that was previously occupied by Lobstercraft, and more recently, Oar & Oak Birdhouse, in a plaza on Stratford’s Main Street became available, Barone looked at it, but nothing moved on until roughly eight months later when he got a call saying it was still up for grabs.

Enter Dave Morton, a longtime friend of Barone’s, and an industry guy in his own right and the second owner of Luxe Wine Bar in Westport where Barone once worked.

“I told the landlord ‘Sure, if you give me a lease tomorrow,’” Barone says. “Neither one of us had two dimes to rub together, but we had to put our money where our mouths are. Dave is the smartest idiot I’ve ever met. He asked what I needed and said he’d take it out of his house in Stratford. I told him he’s insane, but he said he believes in this and that he wanted to do it. I’m not just grateful for the financial aspect. He doesn’t tell me where to put the furniture and lets me do my thing. Most people in this industry can be monsters—they’ll push their mothers in front of a train. We have a deal that we don’t screw each other over. We took a kamikaze run at it, because, look, my grandmother, who was a chef at an Italian restaurant for years, one day she dropped dead. That could happen to me, so I might as well do it. Instead of doing all these other things, I just wanted to focus on one thing.”

This isn’t a Big Mac. It’s bigger, beefier, cheesier, and saucier.

At Heffer, dogs take no backseat. Up front, a chili dog with cheese sauced and diced onions. Blurred in the back is the Windy City, an ode to a Chicago style hot dog, a Kosher split griddled link, tomato, pickles, onions, hot honey mustard, sweet relish, and celery salt.

Besides renovations, there were some things Barone and Morton would have to tweak before they got up and running. First was the name. They didn’t want to stick with Hen and Heffer seeing as how there’s already a popular bakery in Guilford called Hen & Heifer. Although they legally could keep the name, they felt it best to move on from it to avoid confusion, and they realized that they were more burger forward, so Heffer was it, because, Barone says, “that’s how your brain tells you how it’s spelled, and it’s catchy and playful.”

Next up was the need for a chef. Although Barone is capable in the kitchen, he’d find his kitchen lead in his husband, Kevin Palma, who was working as a sous chef at Gabagool Wine Bar in Fairfield

“Kevin is a social worker and that’s what he did in Guatemala,” Barone says. “It didn’t pan out for him being a social worker here, so I used my connections and got him a job at Gabagool. He realized he was really good at it and quickly became their number two in the kitchen. He told me that he was gonna come run the kitchen at Heffer, even though I said no at first, like, we’re gonna see each other that much?! But I’m thankful he insisted. He’s an infinitely better cook than I am. He really took the reigns and has it nailed down. When we opened, former Stratford Mayor Laura Hoydick, married us at the ribbon cutting ceremony. Kind of a publicity stunt, but no, really, we got married here.”

Banana pudding with Nilla Wafers, Cool Whip, and graham cracker crumbs.

Malted milkshakes are a thing here because Barone said there’s really nowhere that’s doing a good, malted shake anymore. But he did first check in with Goody Bassett’s Ice Cream since it’s the neighborly thing to do.

Taking Barone’s idea of retro fast food meets southern fried chicken, Palma ran with it, first taking those burgers from smash style to…thicker, juicier patties that aren’t smashed. And the grind, a blend of sirloin, chuck, and butter, is done in-house.

Some burgers, if you’ve tried all the famous ones at legendary chains, are tributes, only more gourmet. The Rodeo Clown (single patty, pepperjack cheese, onion rings, hot honey BBQ sauce) and the half-pound Double Smash (although not really a smash) with American cheese, pickles, pickled onions, and shredduce, may both ring familiar.

Next to their burgers are a couple fried chicken sandwiches, tenders, split griddled 4.5-ounce Sabrett Hot Dogs, and mac & cheese with homemade cheese sauce.

That house made philosophy also applies to sides, sauces, and desserts like cornbread mini donuts, banana pudding, s’mores bars, fried fresh fruit hand pies, and more. And they’re not skimping on ingredients either, using farm eggs on their breakfast sandwiches and farm fresh milk in their malted milkshakes.

“Everything we can make in-house, we do,” Barone says. “Chicken breading has to be done elsewhere for space reasons. If something doesn’t make sense, we don’t do it. A Nashville hot chicken on the menu next to a BBQ burger with onion rings on top? That makes sense. We started with smaller burger balls, smashing them at a higher temperature, then Kevin started drifting towards bigger burgers.”

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But bigger doesn’t always mean more expensive. One of Heffer’s goals, according to Barone, is to not be out all for themselves. It’s about community and doing the right thing, even citing that they paid attention to the public when they first opened.

“We saw posts on Nextdoor and called an audible because people thought our prices were way out of line,” Barone says. “We were aware of the community resistance to Lobstercraft and their prices. We answered posts and told them they were right, that it’s been adjusted. If people were still on the fence, we bought them lunch. If there’s a problem, we fix it, and we tell our employees to do the right thing. Aren’t you tired of cold, impersonal businesses? Burger doesn’t come with fries? We’ll throw some in if you can’t afford it. If there’s homeless people outside, come in and have a meal. If your sports team is selling a shirt or something, we’ll buy it. It was about making people feel like they got something substantial and got us a lot of instantaneous retention.”

All of that, the food and the hospitality, is a goal moving forward in regards to Heffer’s expansion, something Barone says was always the plan. Both he and Morton would like it to be a chain.

So far, in addition to the Stratford storefront, Heffer has second location, in food truck form, called Heffer Hot to Go, that they, or rather, they had rapper and former Pimp My Ride host, Xzibit, announce for them. We were also told that they’ve looked at spaces in Norwalk and Milford, and if you peeped their website, they are more than happy to talk franchise opportunities to bring the brand to more cities. Safe to say, you should be on the lookout more Heffers, or versions of, to open up in the very near future.

2377 Main Street, Stratford
475.282.4705, gottahaveheffer.com