At Amy’s Drive Thru, the shakes are frothy, the sauce is secret and the fries are golden and crispy. But the sprouts, they are not crunchy. At Amy’s, there are no sprouts. And there is no “crunchy.”
Since at least the 1970s, sprouts have been an essential, nay, stereotypical menu item for natural foods and vegetarian restaurants everywhere, a status cinematically cemented with Alvy Singer’s order of “alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast” during a visit to L.A. in the 1977 comedy Annie Hall. Sprouts, piled high and wild on exotic, fringe foods like falafel, tempeh and tofu, meant health food, and vice versa.
In July, the privately held natural foods manufacturer Amy’s Kitchen opened a drive-through vegetarian restaurant in Rohnert Park that’s touted as the first of its kind. But as vegetarian food makes this historic sortie into mainstream fast food culture, sprouts are not coming along for the ride.
Amy’s is creating a distinction between vegetarian food and fast food that happens to be vegetarian. Understanding that difference is key to understanding the company’s appeal.
AS THE TOFU TURNS
During two visits to Amy’s, I only had to glance at the entrance to see visitors pausing to take a photo as they walked up—big smiles on their faces, they’d clearly been planning to snap that pic. People love Amy’s before they even walk through the door. Indeed, the restaurant’s slogan is that it “runs on love.”
If so, it’s a well-oiled machine that runs on love. A battalion of workers, clad in fair-trade, organic cotton uniforms, run orders and blend shakes. Emerging from the back, managers deal with an equipment issue: clearly food service industry veterans, they’ve got that 1,000-burger stare.
It’s a far cry from a memorable morning-to-afternoon I spent at a perfectly typical vegetarian cafe in the Sierra Foothills a few years back. When my friends and I ordered our food from the beatific young women staffing the joint, we were young men, angling to shake off well-deserved hangovers after a Halloween party. As we waited, we talked and grew weary of talk. But we dared not peek into the kitchen, knowing by long experience that any sign of impatience on the part of the customer in such sanctuaries of virtuous foods might earn a frosty look, if not a lecture. By the time our heaping plates of tempeh stir-fry and hummus arrived, we had reached middle age.
The dream of a happy union between fast food and healthy food is nothing new. Back in 1981, a restaurant with such ambitions opened in Santa Cruz. As a stick in the eye to the reigning fast-food giant, the owners called it McDharma’s. The Clown, he didn’t like that much. The Clown didn’t think it was funny. Facing the overwhelming firepower of McDonald’s litigation, Dharma’s agreed to drop the “Mc” in 1988. They’re still in business—at one location.
So it was looking like we’d get fusion energy before we got a real vegetarian fast-food restaurant, until Santa Monica–based Veggie Grill (in the sexy-sounding “fast casual” category”) expanded into the North Bay in 2014.
CONVENIENCE, HOLD THE MEAT
Amy’s Kitchen has always been about convenience, but up until 2015, they steered clear of retail. A major employer in Petaluma with about a thousand employees and plans for hundreds more, Amy’s also runs manufacturing locations in Oregon, Idaho and the U.K. The company built a not so little empire out of a once-improbable concept: give consumers everything they get in the frozen food aisle, like convenience and familiar entrées, without the meat—and later, without the GMOs, the gluten; without the you-name-it. They’ve got it, if it’s a “not.” Because of Amy’s, and other companies, vegetarians and vegans no longer need pretend to be satisfied with a plain bun with pickles and a side of potato salad at the barbecue—and, because of the quality and variety of Amy’s products, may even have to endure less snickering over their contribution to the grill.
Andy and Rachel Berliner founded Amy’s in 1987, around the time that I decided, at an impressionable young age, that meat was not natural, normal or kind. My parents were unfamiliar with a vegetarian diet, but then Amy’s showed up with wholesome-sounding comfort foods like mac and cheese, enchiladas and pot pies.
After 20 years as a strict vegetarian, I changed my diet—but there’s no point in trying to retrain my family on that fact. To this day, they still keep an Amy’s or two in the freezer for me. And to be honest, whenever I’m feeling blue, my go-to choice among all comfort foods is Amy’s “veggie loaf,” a lentil loaf simulacrum of Salisbury steak, with sides of mashed potatoes and peas.
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ENTER THE CLOWN
It’s been about 10 years since I had a McVeggie burger at McDonald’s. Apparently, there was room under the Golden Arches for experimentation. It was OK. But McDonald’s pulled the product, and the only explanation was lack of consumer demand. Indeed, a 2012 Gallup poll concluded that only 5 percent of Americans identify as vegetarians—an apparently expendable market share for an empire that was founded on efficiency, above all. (The company’s grasp of the vegetarian demographic is apparent in its disclaimer that the product “may come in contact with meat during preparation.”)
In 1948, San Bernardino’s McDonald Brothers Burger Bar Drive-In fired its carhops and installed a streamlined system designed for maximum efficiency operated by minimally skilled labor. The fast-food revolution was born. By the 1980s, however, images of McDonald’s ostensibly happy clown mascot, Ronald McDonald, were showing up in the “zines” (note to youngsters: a kind of photocopied, self-published magazine in the era before the web) of the punk rock era, sporting fascist symbols and salutes. The happy clown had become a villain.
Mainstream America clued into the controversy with the publication of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Back in 2001, Schlosser noted that Americans spent $110 billion on fast food, “more money . . . than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more
on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music—combined.” Today, that figure is some $200 billion.
While working in Germany, I discovered Burger King’s vegetarian “Country Burger.” It’s a pretty good curried version, likely aimed at satisfying immigrant populations. But it’s not available in the States. Instead, we get the bland BK Veggie.
The fast-food burger may be a marvel of modern, chemical taste engineering. The fast-food veggie burger is a marvel of a different order: it’s darned hard to find a good veggie burger. Despite the fact that nearly every brewpub in California now offers a veggie burger option, few are worth the extra price. Some appear to be thinly veiled insults: mealy quinoa apologies stuffed in an obscenely greased-up bun, as if to say that if you don’t want saturated fat on the inside, you’ll darn well get it on the outside.
BUILDING THE MEATLESS BURGER
The Amy’s Drive Thru burger was carefully designed. Although Amy’s Kitchen markets a frozen veggie patty for every veggie taste, this version was developed, according to the company, over the course of 1,000 recipe trials. If the patty seems a little undersized, there’s no use in asking, “Where’s the beef?” Order the menu headliner, the double-patty “Amy,” for a dollar and change extra.
The burger’s texture is firm, and a hint of smoke lingers on my fingers. The cheese is a small square of cheddar, and the lettuce and locally brined pickles are topped off with Thousand Island–type “secret sauce” available in regular or spicy. When I opt for spicy at the restaurant, the order taker punctuates the exchange with an enthusiastic, “Yeah!”
Noteworthy in its absence is whole wheat, a natural foods mainstay. The Amy’s burger bun may be organic and non-GMO, but it’s made from white flour—another contrast to Veggie Grill. It’s no small matter: the bun is half the burger, and the burger is the reason for the restaurant. I can only imagine there was a standoff between two possible consumer perceptions: whole wheat is healthy vs. whole wheat is toxic to the mainstream image of classic, American fast food. The white bun took that round.
Perhaps it’s more important to today’s consumer that the burger is GMO-free, a perceived health benefit—in the context of a white-flour, fast-food burger bun—with little to no scientific consensus backing it: genetically modified wheat is actually not currently available to farmers. “No GMOs” ranks at the top of Amy’s Drive Thru menu, followed by “Organic,” with “Gluten-free” and “Vegan” options.
Turning to the mission statement: “Amy’s Drive Thru is returning to the roots of American fast food, serving lovingly handcrafted food to nourish hard-working citizens, busy families and road-weary travelers.” Sounds great, tell me more: “What’s Cooking? Authentic American classics in a new American style. Burgers, shakes & fries made with organic and non-GMO ingredients. Fresh veggies from the farm around the corner. French fries with a story to tell. Gluten-free and vegan options for everything!”
If I wasn’t already familiar with Amy’s Kitchen, I’d have no idea at all that every item on the menu here is vegetarian. But will the message remain the same when, and if, Amy’s Drive Thru expands beyond its home turf, where the company is already well-recognized and held in high regard? Perhaps when vegetarians secure a real cultural gain, they no longer bare their teeth.
There is certainly no talk of happy cows and karma saved on the packaging. The burger box sports a surfboard graphic, and the takeout bags bear a manly message: Fred’s secret sauce vs. Fred Jr.’s secret hot sauce.
But the burger is still a recognizable veggie burger. Amy’s says it’s a mix of organic vegetables, grains and beans. With minor exceptions, Amy’s Kitchen has never much played the fake meat game. The veggie loaf frozen dinner, for instance, could never be mistaken for anything but what it is: a lentil loaf. At Veggie Grill, which is 100 percent vegan but dares not say it out loud, soy protein is disguised to look like chicken nuggets or beef burgers. Each in their own way, Amy’s Drive Thru and Veggie Grill seem to take care not to frighten off that most timid and shy of demographics: the all-American meat eater.
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Amy’s fries are deep-fried perfection. No upscale, shoestring style here, and no skins. No sweet potato, no baked strips of kale. They’re just greasy enough. And how does Amy’s whip the organic dairy into such a surreal froth that the vanilla shake takes me back decades, to the last time I ordered such a thing from a fast-food restaurant? I’m told the vegan version is much chunkier.
If this is what marginal market share that’s not worth a dime to the burger heavies looks like, you wouldn’t know it by the constant stream of customers. A man in line behind me is pleasantly surprised on his first visit. “What a neat concept, huh?” he says to a companion. “Oh, chili fries—wow!” Amy’s has scooped up all of that pent-up demand, spread out over thousands of dissatisfied visits to other chains, and parked it in one spot.
FAST, SLOW
and GREEN
Speaking of parking, Amy’s can accommodate 140 visitors in indoor and outdoor seating areas, but while there’s plenty of seating available, the parking lot is near stuffed. On my second visit, I see a woman exit the drive-through only to park in a stall. I park and look around me: here and there, people are still sitting in their cars.
I have to get the full Amy’s experience, so I’ve got the windows rolled down and the A/C on, and I’m rolling, rolling through the drive-through lane. And then I’m idling, I’m idling in the drive-through lane, with a minimum 12 other cars.
When I was a walk-in customer, a couple still deciding on the menu waved me on, and I walked right up to the register. I got my burger within five minutes. Now I’m stuck in my car, idling to the point that I feel self-conscious about it and switch the engine off just in time to have to move up one car length closer to the window again. Much of the time, a drive-through only provides the illusion of speed and convenience. For many, that may be a cherished illusion.
Ideally, you’d do the drive-through in an electric vehicle. An employee might not come out on roller skates to give you a hug, but Amy’s does provide an EV charging station.
At least I can admire the landscaping. Across the street, fast-food chains have the same landscaping that you see from coast to coast: thirsty green hillocks of lawn, a landscape driven by fear of looking different. In contrast, Amy’s is a drought-friendly oasis of native plants, young oak trees, shrubs and grasses plunked in a thick bark mulch. The soon-to-be iconic water tower is actually functional, collecting rain water to keep the plants on the “living roof” alive.
The company claims that over 95 percent of the wood used in the restaurant’s construction was either recycled or upcycled from cast-offs, and the rest was Forest Stewardship Council–certified. A section of the drive-through is shaded by a battery of solar panels that offsets its energy use. At Amy’s, I almost feel that I can have my carbon-spewing cake and eat it, too. By the way, there’s no cake on the menu.
I DID HAVE FRIES THAT NIGHT
Roundtrip to the Bohemian: 22 miles. Gasoline burned: half a gallon. Contribution to the atmosphere: 10 pounds of CO2. Pizzas harmed: one. Amy’s organic Margherita pizza is similar to the frozen pizza of the same name, and it didn’t travel really well—a few minutes in an oven might have freshened it up. To be fair, it’s a fast-food pizza, with a little cheese and an edible crust, and it’s fine.
Made for this kind of life, the chili cheese fries ($3.49) are a hit. The classic burrito ($4.69), also available in a bowl, has a mild spiciness and refried consistency that’s superior to, yet reminiscent of, many a young and poor vegetarian’s default road trip option: the seven-layer burrito.
The most expensive items on the menu are the salads. You can’t fake a salad, although the behemoths of burgerland try and try again to indulge an allegedly health-conscious public with iceberg lettuce and mean little tomatoes—and the calorie tally is a whopper after the dressing is poured.
Here, there are shades of bright and deep green. Lots of shredded carrot, and a reasonably ripe tomato. And what’s this: hummus, quinoa and tofu are not in exile, after all. They’ve got their place at the end of the menu, in the super salad ($7.99).
The lettuce only travels 12 miles from farm to Drive Thru. Indeed, I see a pile of lettuce leaves on my walk around the restaurant, reminiscent of delivery mishaps at a bustling fresh produce market.
What else is local? I ask the young cashier. “Um, I’m pretty sure everything’s local!” she says. Well, at least we can count on the Coast Roast coffee from Tomales, Clover Stornetta sour cream and chocolate milk from Organic Valley co-op dairies. The goat cheese add-on for salads (75 cents) is from Oregon. But everything’s local in Oregon.
It’s only when I pile a vegan option on top of a gluten-free option that Amy’s carefully tailored, iconic all-American burger begins to wobble. The gluten-free bun is a kind of spongy pancake, made with rice flour and apparently based on Amy’s Kitchen’s gluten-free sandwich rounds; the burger is mealier and falls apart more easily than the standard Amy. Still, packed with crisp lettuce and topped with a much more generous slice of vegan cheese, it’s a brave little burger, and really not bad at all.
Meanwhile, down the street, Arby’s is piling brown sugar bacon on top of a sandwich already stuffed with smoked ham. For all its efforts to appear as nonthreatening as possible, Amy’s Drive Thru is, indeed, no threat—yet—to the factory-farm, fast-food industrial complex. There’s a fine line between beating them at their own game and becoming indistinguishable from that very same machine. If any company can do it, Amy’s is well positioned. They are certainly no clowns.
