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

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 desires 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 take a seat down in considered one of 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 eating regimen, Plitch lived off a eating regimen of Burger King Inconceivable Whoppers, which didn’t really feel proper to him. “I’ll always remember going via 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 when it comes to what [I’m] all about,” he says. Realizing he had a chance to fill what he noticed as a gap out there, Plitch reached out to Baz, who he is aware of via her husband, Ben Willett.

Face Plant

Baz, who will not 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 bought a bit neglected 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 now have faux meat that bleeds, and that’s unimaginable, but when it doesn’t style pretty much 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 proper 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 objects 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 possibility 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 chunk?” Baz says. “Am I simply dying for an additional chunk? 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 strategy he needed to take; he sees his audience because the McDonald’s buyer who’s searching for an inexpensive and handy meal that matches into their busy schedule. In distinction to quick meals chains which might be automating their customer support, Plitch sees interactions between clients 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 fashion, as an alternative of shoppers ordering via an intercom.

Plitch sees the restaurant’s worth level as one other issue making Face Plant accessible to Portland’s already avid fast-food clients. Since 2019, quick meals costs have skyrocketed, with the price of a Large Mac rising from $3.99 to $7.99 in some areas. At Face Plant, objects 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 shopper expertise. To Plitch, opening a plant-based chain is a path to lowering carbon emissions and pushing again in opposition to local weather change. Whereas there have been main developments within the power 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 focusing on the smaller vegan viewers, Plitch desires to supply another that folks can select over a Wendy’s or Burger King. “We’re not 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 manner we obtain the mission is by constructing a greater fast-food expertise and menu than the meat-based competitors.”

Whereas the mission has been underneath wraps for 3 years, each Baz and Plitch are simply excited for folks to attempt what they’ve been engaged on — and the influence the enterprise might have. “If I can efficiently create one thing that folks discover actually scrumptious, then I’ve participated in what may very well be an enormous change … altering habits around the globe in phrases meat consumption,” Baz says. “So it’s clearly a fairly 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 broaden far past Portland, Oregon. However proper now, he’s centered on beginning to welcome clients in. “Nothing issues greater than lastly having this reward and unimaginable honor of serving folks scrumptious meals,” Plitch says.

Face Plant

Face Plant

Face Plant

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