Lexington’s 2nd Annual Burger Week wrapped up last night and waves of people, who stood in line all week to stuff their faces with $5 burgers at local restaurants, have now moved over to another long line. While the results have yet to be announced, the mob of people outside the building have made it pretty clear that the unofficial winner of this year’s Burger Week competition is UK’s Gill Heart Institute. Like a Walmart prepping for Black Friday, the cardiologists and staff are reportedly bracing for their busiest day of the year, “Blockage Monday.”

“We’ve learned that many Lexingtonians over the past 7 days have actually visited multiple burger joints EVERY single day, “explains cardiologist Dr Cole Esteral. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. Especially when these folks go on a 15 to 25 burger bender over the course of one week. It’s great for business though, so were not complaining,” finished the doctor as he made angioplasty balloon animals for the kids in the waiting room.

While Lexington Cardiology ran a “Buy 1 Stent, Get 1 Free” Groupon this week, the Gill Heart Institute just relied on good ol’ fashion word of mouth to mouth resuscitation to attract the masses.

“Yeah, we had quite a few people come through this year,” says Gill Heart nurse Jackie. “It puts a lot of pressure on our staff, but the participating restaurants rely on repeat business from this event after pretty much giving those burgers away. So if we don’t do our jobs, and drop the ball like we did during corndog week back in ’09, the restaurants won’t be seeing those customers back anytime soon either.”

Many other businesses were impacted by the Burger Week competition as well.  Restaurants that don’t serve burgers, such as Lexington’s vast array of pizza joints and many of our other health food stores, saw a sharp decrease in sales.

“The problem isn’t the buzz and excitement surrounding Burger Week or the low cost of the burgers. The problem is, with all these people eating burgers, they aren’t taking the time to eat anything healthy…like pizza,” said Little Caesars owner Pappy Julius.

Despite this year’s event being even bigger than last year, the Gill Heart Institute was better prepared to handle the heavy traffic, which minimized many of the issues they saw in 2015. While there were still some injuries reported from people pushing and shoving their way in, this year Lexington police were happy to report far fewer cardiac arrests.