Hank Murphy has been perfecting the art of the bean and cheese burrito for decades.
"I can be a little obsessive when I get into something," he admits.
The obsession started early. Murphy grew up in Phoenix as a picky kid with parents who loved local Mexican restaurants. Looking for a safe option, Murphy locked in on the humble two-ingredient burrito.
“My favorite was Los Dos Molinos off of Alma School and Broadway," Murphy recalls. "At some places, a bean and cheese feels more like an afterthought, but at Los Dos, they made it a main event, with whole beans. It’s just a really special burrito."
His fervor went so far that he invited his fourth-grade teacher to experience them.
“I was raving about them at school, like she had never had a burrito, and trying to explain it to her, like, ‘You have to try this’ . . . and she did! She went with us to dinner and ate a burrito with me and my family,” Murphy says, laughing.
Years later, Murphy is bringing his love of his signature classic to the masses with Bad Hambres Burritos, a company that sells "obsessively crafted" frozen bean and cheese burritos delivered to your door in batches of six, 12, 24 or 36 for about $5.50 apiece. The company's rapid growth has brought its own challenges, but the passion remains the same. Beans and cheese are at the center of it all.
A craving in the wilderness
Throughout Murphy's childhood and beyond, his obsession continued to grow. In college, he worked as a wilderness guide, and while on a days-long kayaking trek across Prince William Sound in southeast Alaska, a familiar hunger took hold.
“The rule with food on these trips is that it is diminishing returns, it gets worse as the days go on, and I just had this insane craving, really fantasizing at that point, deep in the woods, for a bean and cheese burrito," he says. "It dawned on me that the best ones – and at this point I had eaten thousands – were a little bit magic."
Murphy realized that while he loved bean and cheese burritos, he didn't know much about making them. So he set out to fix that.
After college, he moved to Kentucky and threw himself into perfecting a burrito he could call his own. He researched recipes, bean soaking methods, brines and fat combinations, and chatted with anyone with a passion for cooking that was willing to talk.
Life took him back to the West Coast, and eventually to Phoenix, where Murphy kept chasing the elusive perfect burrito recipe. Last year, he was motivated to take the next steps.
To ring in 2024, Murphy served his burritos at a New Year’s Eve dinner party. The feedback from guests was overwhelmingly positive. One guest who couldn't make it to the party heard the hype and texted Murphy to see if he could buy one. He was tenacious and insistent, and that got Murphy’s wheels turning.
All in on the bean dream
A few months later, Murphy pitched the idea to his wife, Sam, an entrepreneur and brand designer.“She was excited and supportive, so I sent out a text to my friends: I’m making 120 burritos out of my kitchen, and I’m going to sell them for 5 bucks apiece," Murphy says. "That was our first sellout."
With an “insane” amount of beans in his personal kitchen and an all-day cooking marathon, Murphy completed the first burrito drop. The now-signature Bad Hambres Burritos, filled with slow-cooked beans simmered in a broth of roasted chicken bones, carrots, celery, garlic, onion and habanero, paired with Monterey Jack cheese and ensconced tightly in a La Purisma Bakery flour tortilla (then covered with more cheese), were an instant hit.
Then, he started to get random text messages. People explained that they had gotten his number from a friend or neighbor after hearing about some incredible frozen burritos.
A week later after that first drop, Murphy started the application for permits from the health department, got his paperwork together and rented a space at BLT Kitchens, a shared commissary kitchen off Dunlap Avenue.
The low-and-slow cooking method required for the beans didn't fit well with working in a shared kitchen, resulting in Murphy working overnight. The hours were grueling and after a few more sellout drops, he conceded that he needed his own kitchen. Luckily, the perfect space was right under their nose.
“This is one of the first Taco Bell locations, from 1965. My dad used to come here,” Murphy says. The spot was dormant, used as a storage building for The Vig, located across 40th Street.
The paperwork was done in August, just in time for Murphy to quit his day job and go all-in on the bean dream. A few weeks later, he persuaded Sam to join him and embark on the Bad Hambres adventure.
“I knew I could make the burritos, make them well, and scale the business, manage people, all of that. But the marketing side was unknown territory," Murphy says. "She had the other half I was missing."
Getting wrapped up in burrito drama
A defining feature of Bad Hambres is the episodic nature of their TikTok and Instagram reels, which are filmed with the high-stakes, sometimes warts-and-all approach of reality television. Viewers get to see Murphy stepping away from his full-time, safe job and take the leap into entrepreneurship, which includes sleepless nights bean-stirring and monologuing about inopportune equipment failures. Tasty burritos aside, it makes for riveting viewing.
“That’s all Sam,” Murphy notes. “I had an Instagram account that had been dormant since 2016. I really didn’t even know how to use it."
After posting a "Part 1" episode in September, Bad Hambres soon amassed a massive following that eagerly awaited updates on burrito drops and the subsequent burrito drama of starting the company and meeting the growing demand.
While the couple is transparent about sharing their trials and tribulations with their loyal fanbase, Murphy is ever-optimistic about the trajectory of the business.
“Sam is constantly trying to temper my optimism. She's been through the highs and lows of opening a business. With every new plateau, I think we have broken through to something significant, and she thinks it will go back to baseline, so we are balanced in that respect,” Murphy says.
Part of the optimism, Murphy concedes, is that he truly believes in his burritos.
“We are not trying to compete with any of the stellar Mexican restaurants or food trucks or chefs in the Valley," he says. "We are essentially a frozen foods business. . .and that is an entirely different challenge and market."
That approach seems to be working. Each drop is an almost instant sellout. The most recent drop of 6,000 burritos was completely gone by the week's end, prompting another late-night cooking session to keep up with the demand. The hunger for the Bad Hambres bean and cheese does not seem to be abating, with an ever-growing list of burrito hounds clamoring for the next drop announcement via the company's mailing list.
While sellouts and growing social media accounts are great, Murphy's passion remains the same. Get him talking about the bean and cheese burrito, and Murphy lights up excitedly like the kid explaining his favorite food to a kind teacher.
“I’ve tried a lot of bean and cheese burritos. Our mission is to create the best-tasting, most delicious frozen bean and cheese burrito, and this is my idea of what that is," he says. "We think these, with whole beans, with chicken stock, with a little spice, we think these taste the best."
