At Portland’s New Vegan Burger Drive-Through Face Plant, Quick-Meals Classics Get the Molly Baz Remedy

The very first thing that involves thoughts when picturing an all-American fast-food drive-thru most likely isn’t a vegan cheeseburger, however Matt Plitch needs to alter that. Face Plant, an all-vegan drive-thru, will debut in a former McDonald’s location in Portland in January 2025. The drive-thru will serve acquainted classics like cheeseburgers, fries, nuggets, and shakes developed by cookbook writer and mayo influencer Molly Baz, who’s Face Plant’s head of culinary improvement.

Face Plant has been within the works since 2021, when Plitch went vegan and realized his choices had been restricted for fast, handy, and reasonably priced plant-based dinners. Working lengthy days at a start-up, he didn’t have the time to sit down down in one in all Portland’s many vegan eating places or the funds to maintain eating out on a regular basis. Throughout his first month after transitioning to a vegan weight loss plan, Plitch lived off a weight loss plan of Burger King Inconceivable Whoppers, which didn’t really feel proper to him. “I’ll always remember going by the drive-thru and ordering my quantity six, no dairy, and feeling a bit like being nourished by an organization that didn’t actually resonate with me by way of what [I’m] all about,” he says. Realizing he had a possibility to fill what he noticed as a gap available in the market, Plitch reached out to Baz, who he is aware of by her husband, Ben Willett.

Face Plant

Baz, who shouldn’t be vegan, noticed Plitch’s proposal to reimagine vegan hamburgers as an intriguing problem. “I had by no means been somebody who had taken pleasure in consuming a plant-based burger earlier than,” she says, “I really feel like there was simply a lot innovation in plant-based meals, however someplace alongside the way in which, taste received a little bit missed and misplaced.” Baz noticed the chance to create one thing that she, as a meat-eater, would fortunately select to eat. “It’s wonderful that firms like Inconceivable have innovated and are available so far as they’ve,” she says. “We have now pretend meat that bleeds, and that’s unimaginable, but when it doesn’t style nearly as good as [meat], then we’re by no means going to alter the consuming behaviors and patterns of meat eaters in America, myself included.”

Utilizing herself as a guinea pig and an Inconceivable Meals patty as the bottom, Baz started to experiment in her kitchen with completely different seasoning mixes and methods to amp up the patty’s taste. “I’m form of like the right goal for it, as a result of I attempt to not eat something that’s not scrumptious,” she says. “Frankly, I keep away from issues that aren’t scrumptious.”

After three years of improvement, Baz and Plitch have landed on a proprietary spice mix for the burger and chicken-less nuggets at Face Plant; each menu gadgets will use Inconceivable Meals merchandise as the bottom. “The intention of the mix is to create a mouth-watering form of sensation of juiciness, smokiness, brightness, and fattiness,” Baz says. “All these issues that you simply affiliate with consuming a beef burger.” The burgers at Face Plant will resemble a McDonald’s burger — the patty goes out someplace between a smash and char-grilled burger. The basic comes with ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese, whereas the extra deluxe choice provides in tomatoes and a vegan mayo-based burger sauce. Face Plant isn’t the primary fast-food burger restaurant to revamp Inconceivable Meals and different already-established vegan merchandise for its menu. Los Angeles’s Mr. Charlie’s, a plant-based play on McDonald’s, makes use of the model’s patties for its Not a Cheeseburger, whereas the Not Rooster Nuggets are made utilizing Tindle nuggets.

Plitch and Baz have additionally developed a dipping sauce for the restaurant’s nuggets. “For me, the litmus check is, do I would like one other chew?” Baz says. “Am I simply dying for an additional chew? As a result of if not, then we failed on the mission.”

As Plitch started to consider Face Plant, the drive-thru mannequin crystallized because the method he needed to take; he sees his audience because the McDonald’s buyer who’s on the lookout for an inexpensive and handy meal that matches into their busy schedule. In distinction to quick meals chains which can be automating their customer support, Plitch sees interactions between prospects and workers as a necessary a part of the restaurant. On this case, workers will come out to the automobiles and meet drivers within the lane to take their orders In-N-Out type, as an alternative of consumers ordering by an intercom.

Plitch sees the restaurant’s value level as one other issue making Face Plant accessible to Portland’s already avid fast-food prospects. Since 2019, quick meals costs have skyrocketed, with the price of a Massive Mac rising from $3.99 to $7.99 in some areas. At Face Plant, gadgets will probably be inside 50 cents to a greenback of their meat-based opponents, with burgers coming in between $5 and $7, and combos costing between $10 and $11.

Face Plant’s mission seemingly goes past simply the burgers and the client expertise. To Plitch, opening a plant-based chain is a path to decreasing carbon emissions and pushing again in opposition to local weather change. Whereas there have been main developments within the vitality and transportation sectors, he says that there’s nonetheless one thing to be desired with what and the way folks eat. However as an alternative of simply concentrating on the smaller vegan viewers, Plitch needs to supply another that folks can select over a Wendy’s or Burger King. “We aren’t making an attempt to construct the perfect vegan fast-food chain, or fast-food chain for vegans or vegetarians or people who find themselves plant curious,” he says. “The one method we obtain the mission is by constructing a greater fast-food expertise and menu than the meat-based competitors.”

Whereas the mission has been beneath wraps for 3 years, each Baz and Plitch are simply excited for folks to attempt what they’ve been engaged on — and the impression the enterprise may have. “If I can efficiently create one thing that folks discover actually scrumptious, then I’ve participated in what might be an enormous change … altering habits all over the world in phrases meat consumption,” Baz says. “So it’s clearly a reasonably tall order, however simply excited for folks to style.”

For Plitch, the flagship is the start of what he hopes will probably be a sequence that may increase far past Portland, Oregon. However proper now, he’s targeted on beginning to welcome prospects in. “Nothing issues greater than lastly having this present and unimaginable honor of serving folks scrumptious meals,” Plitch says.

Face Plant

Face Plant

Face Plant

Face Plant will probably be positioned at 3110 N. Going Avenue, Portland, OR 97217 and is slated to open January 2025.