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No one understands the art of making food with intention for busy humans on the go quite like Amy’s Kitchen. When the brand’s fans asked the vegetarian food phenomenon if they could open a drive-thru eatery, Amy’s Kitchen made it happen. Now, Amy’s Drive Thru has five locations in California, and they’re a perfect place to celebrate National Fast Food Day on Nov. 16.
It’s no secret that Americans love their fast food. In the second quarter of 2023, The Washington Post reports sales at fast-food and quick-serve restaurants such as McDonald’s and Starbucks increased by an average of 5.75% over the same quarter last year. Amy’s Kitchen decided to put a different spin on the stereotypical concept of quick meals. Amy’s Drive Thru dishes out organic and non-GMO veggie burgers, fries, milkshakes, and salads. As a bonus, every item on the menu can be made gluten-free and vegan.
“For many years, our consumers have been saying from time to time, ‘Why can’t you guys open a drive-thru? My kids want to go to McDonald’s, and they want to go to Taco Bell, and we don’t feel good about taking them there,” Amy’s Kitchen co-founder Andy Berliner said on an episode of the “Lead With Me” podcast. “So finally someone joined the company that had a little background in retail, and so we decided to try it and we had no idea if it would be successful. We thought maybe it would break even. And we opened our first drive-thru in Rohnert Park [California] a block away from In-N-Out and across the street now from Chick-fil-A.”
Amy’s Kitchen opened that first drive-thru in 2015. The company’s president, Paul Schiefer, says thoughtful expansion has been another recipe for success.
“We’re going to grow from the basis of sustainable growth, not just to show we can do it,” Schiefer shared with Nation’s Restaurant News. “There are too many casualties of companies that grew in the wrong way. They didn’t build a model, playbook, or team. We don’t want to chase some short-term trend. We want to take our time and grow intentionally.”
Andy Berliner says they’ve outperformed competitors in their original location in Rohnert Park and admits they found it shocking.
“I just couldn’t believe the lines of cars that were there the day we opened and the publicity and the amount of business we were doing,” Berliner recalled. “We weren’t prepared. We didn’t do very well in servicing very quickly. We took a while to figure it all out, and now we opened at the airport, which wasn’t the best thing in the world right before COVID hit, but that’s reopened now. And we opened in Corte Madera [California] in the midst of COVID, and it’s doing very well.”
Since then, Amy’s Drive Thru has popped up in additional spots in the Golden State. The latest addition is in Thousand Oaks, which opened its doors in June. The 4,060-square-foot space was constructed with sustainably sourced building materials and according to a press release, it’s operating as sustainably as possible, aiming for net zero and low environmental impact.
“We’re very excited about the drive-thrus and what the drive-thru offers is food that people are used to — burgers, shakes, fries, fabulous salads — but everything’s organic and no matter what your dietary need is, whether it’s gluten-free or vegan or you’re just a regular vegetarian, you eat dairy, you can order anything on the menu to your needs, which is really unique,” Berliner added.
Taking a total leap of faith, Andy Berliner, who launched Amy’s Kitchen with his wife, Rachel Berliner, in 1987, approached the leap into the fast-food industry with the same organic ease the couple grew with Amy’s frozen food line.
“It was an experiment,” Rachel Berliner confessed.
Despite the fast-food side of the business possessing the same vegetarian and organic ingredients as the brand’s grocery store items, Rachel Berliner says they wanted to make sure the free-standing restaurants had their own distinct flavor for consumers.
“We created a different organization,” Rachel Berliner told the “Lead With Me” podcast. “It’s separate from Amy’s Kitchen. We had a great designer who designed the inside and made it all sustainable and fun to go in, and we have a green roof on it and lots of beautiful gardens and good food.”
Getting the right team of talented people on board didn’t hurt, either. “We hired someone who knew the business and he improved things so much,” Andy Berliner emphasized. “That made a huge difference in getting the right talent in there. But financially, it’s a commitment, and we have learned, and he has explained to us, that you can’t grow faster than you can develop the personnel to train others. We have a separate grill for gluten-free. Everything’s got to be separate, dairy-free, the whole kitchen’s going to be set up a certain way. We’ve done beautifully. But it takes a lot of work.”
Amy’s Drive Thru has been making a trendy splash in the social media world with vegan bloggers flocking to the fast-food spots.
In a “World of Vegan” YouTube video, hosts Michelle Cehn from World of Vegan and Toni Okamoto from Vegan Outreach expressed their appreciation for Amy’s Drive Thru.
“This is a 100% vegetarian drive-thru fast-food restaurant,” Cehn said. “Everything on their menu can be ordered vegan, and it comes out super fast. We pretty much ordered everything on the menu and it was really good. It far surpassed my expectations. My favorite was the burger.”
Blogger Rochelle shared an Instagram video on @amysdrivethru stating, “Everything we had was absolutely delicious. I love that they use locally sourced, organic, non-GMO organic ingredients and that many of their items are gluten-free or vegan. While their shakes are delicious, so are their lemonades. And they also offer coloring pages for the kids. We can’t wait to go back and try even more of their foods.”
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