Manifesting a Vegan Fast Food Chain (long post)

[Dan.Linehan]

SlashChick said something a few days ago that brought a lot of things together for me in its simplicity.

Originally Posted by SlashChick

So you want to polarize? Set goals that are bigger than yourself, and work to achieve them, and by necessity, you will polarize. Yep, it's that simple.

Over the years its gotten way harder for me to find things that I'm truly passionate about. The last two or three things that I've been really passionate about turned out to be short lived victories. Here's a (not so brief!) history:

• I was in restaurant management for years, man did that suck. My GMs were always lame, and it was just a thankless job. I wanted a computer job more than anything! The idea seemed like paradise. A computer job. I finally found one at CallTech Communications doing tech support.

• I was hired in as a tier2 at CallTech. It was a perfect fit for me. I fixed about 50 people's DSL service every day, and boy were subscribers happy that I wasn't from India. We called tier3's for questions, or when we got stuck on a call, or if someone requested a supervisor. Tier3's were leet! My next goal was definitely to become a tier3.

• I became a tier3 three months later. This job was actually really cool. There was lots to learn. I took supervisor escalations from customers, and helped the tier2s manage their calls, and sorted through thousands of tickets. Actually pretty fun, especially if, like me, you subscribe to Steve's "Life is like a game" theory. But about four months in I had learned all there was to know about being a good tier3. After six months I decided that I wanted to become a tier3 supervisor. Coolest job ever, right? The ratio of tier2 to tier3 staffing was 20-1, so there were only three tier3 supervisors for 700 employees on the project. I mean, the job was managing the tier3's. It didn't get any more 1337 that that!

• It took me about a year but I did it. I became a tier2 supervisor, then an operations supervisor, then a tier3 supervisor. And it was the coolest job ever, just like I thought! For about six months anyway. Our project manager was a great guy, but he couldn't run the center the way it needed to ran because of amazingly inept, awful, knee jerk decision making by upper management. I had moved up high enough up in the company to see all of its faults. And I couldn't move up any further without a lot of political game playing. Which is one game I don't play.

Since then, I've been at a loss. What the hell am I going to do with my life??

I started a consulting company, and I had an excellent business partner, but fixing broken networks for 14 hours a day just wasn't my idea of a good time. It was really my partner's passion, but it wasn't mine. I kept trying to force myself to care about fixing these people's websites and networks, but I was only doing it for the money. I couldn't seperate working for someone from furthering their goals, and my goals weren't aligned with theirs.

At CallTech the goal was to get people online with their highspeed services. That was a worthy cause, people were genuinely happy when we got them online. But what's so great about building a website for some rinky-dink mortgage company? Or fixing someone's shopping cart that sells postcards? I couldn't get excited about it.

It's not that I can't manifest, because oh, I can.

It's that I don't know what to manifest.

Set goals that are bigger than yourself, and work to achieve them, and by necessity, you will polarize.

I've thought about that a lot lately. What's the next step? What can I choose that won't be just be another empty victory when I get there?

It's been way harder to figure out than I thought it would be.

After reading all of Steve and Erin's stuff about veganism, I gave it a try, and actually liked it a lot. I was definitely really steakhouse before I started. In fact, I literally scheduled eating out twice a week around "all you could eat steak nights" at two different steakhouses in Columbus, Ohio. But once you get used to it, vegan food is better on so many levels. On top of the better food, you're inherently shaping your life around a worthy cause. I dig that.

The only hard part is eating out as a vegan. I eat out a lot, or I used to anyway. At my old job after I went vegan, I ended up eating the same chipotle burrito for lunch five days a week because that's all that was available at the restaurants in the area. Even my favorite Caeser salad at Wendy's was way off limits. Burger King has a veggie burger, but its definitely not vegan. French fries are fried in the same grease as chicken tenders.

I've collected web domains since I was about sixteen. I started looking for available "vegan" domains, and in the spirit of the name of Erin's site VegFamily magazine - Raising Vegan Children, Vegan Pregnancy, and Vegan Recipes I found that FastVeg.com, FastVeg.net, and FastVeg.org were available.

That was a few months ago, and I keep processing it over and over again in my mind. What would it be like if there was a national chain of vegan fast food joints? Certain menu items could even be raw, and we would buy organic and local produce whenever we could.

I have plenty of restaurant management experience; I even still have some good friends in the industry. I'm also pretty well-versed in web development and marketing in general. And my business sense is pretty well honed from the consulting company.

But when it comes down to it those things don't even matter. I'm passionate about the idea. I can envision it doing lots of good for many people. There's really no logical end to a fast food chain's potential. I mean, this is how people eat.

So, that's what I'm doing.

My intention is to develop "Fast Veg" into a national, vegan and organic raw foods fast food chain.

Here goes something..

[starlet]

Ooh sounds yummy! Not a Vegan (love my dead animal products much too much), but it would be a welcome change of pace I'll be your first customer!

[Dan.Linehan]

Thanks Starlet!

I'm definitely planning on several flavors of vegan and raw milkshakes as well as some other brownie based desserts.

[kinerkid]

Wow Dan,

I think this is a fabulous idea! I'm not a vegan myself, but having a healthy alternative to all that yucky fast food would be such a welcome! I rarely eat fast food because it's so bad for you. That makes my lunches out expensive and time consuming. This would be WONDERFUL!!!! Open one up in Nashville first!!!!

[One]

One strategy you might try is not to overly promote the vegan aspect of your restaurant. As they are a small minority it might be a good idea to promote as a place with really good, healthy food that happens to be vegan.

[Erin Pavlina]

I would love to see a vegan fast food chain. We should discuss. I know a lot of vegan restaurant owners including two who have tried to create a vegan fast food chain and had some difficulty even with some major players on their team (KFC, and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchise director).

I would totally support a vegan fast food chain. If my calling weren't in another direction I'd have opened up one myself.

[Dan.Linehan]

Definitely Erin, it amazes me that there isn't one already. Maybe it just needed the right name?

[starlet]

Originally Posted by One

One strategy you might try is not to overly promote the vegan aspect of your restaurant. As they are a small minority it might be a good idea to promote as a place with really good, healthy food that happens to be vegan.

I agree fully. We have a Vegan diner on our street and it nearly went under because people associate Vegan with some really weird ideas about food.

"Fast food without the fast food pounds!"

[skinnyninja]

Exciting idea.

I have two suggestions. One, get the word "veggie" into the name. Call it Super Veggie or Quick Veggie or Veggie Express or whatever. But "veggie" has a nice jingle to it, all by itself, IMO.

Other idea is to start out with delicious but not necessarily the healthiest foods. I know that sounds terrible, and goes against the whole idea, but it might help to "convert" some of us unhealthy eaters. What's important is the underlying message, right? Just an idea.

You could always switch to a healthier menu later on, once you've got a customer base...

[JJH]

I'm not even vegetarian, but because of the healthy and tasty food, I would definitely go to a place like this all the time!

Absolutely fantastic idea, and I wish you all the success in making it a reality!

[One]

Originally Posted by starlet

I agree fully. We have a Vegan diner on our street and it nearly went under because people associate Vegan with some really weird ideas about food.

"Fast food without the fast food pounds!"

The way I see it, if you create the restaurant and do it right, you won't have to worry about vegans finding out. For the lack of supply they'll flock to you. The business that'll be keeping you afloat in the meantime is the regular meat eating crowd. Your motto could be something like "Real Food - Fast". At the same time you might also want to avoid over promoting the health aspect. People shouldn't get imagery of munching celery stalks when they see your restaurant.

*Edit* As much as I like celery. Especially with peanut butter.

[Red Willow]

I try to eat vegan most of the time, so I'd definitely support your chain. Living in L.A.,it's not that hard to find vegan food or even raw vegan, but I know that's not true for most of the country. Sounds great.

[Erin Pavlina]

When I was imagining opening a vegan fast food joint here was the menu I considered:

Burgers, shake and fries (but healthy versions)
Sandwiches and wraps (mock meats, tofu salad sandwiches, etc.)
Soups (vegetable, bean, cream of broccoli, etc.)
Salads
Desserts like soft serve or sundaes, cookies, tarts, brownies

And I'd even have a breakfast menu that included:
French toast sticks, pancakes, biscuits with tofu scramble, fake bacon, vegan cheese, muffins

Oh the glory of it all. Dan, when you're ready, you talk to me and Steve about investing.

[Adrienne]

Dan
I had the same idea. Started working on business ideas and a business model for it as a few months ago. I had alot of the same ideas are you did, but i focused also on it becoming bigger then just a restaurant. The restaurant, for me, is just the first step in creating a better, happier environment and happier healthier people.

Obviously, i think it is a great idea. Good luck!

Adrienne

[yesyesyes]

Vegan doesn't necessarily coincide with healthy. MSG might be vegan. And you can still stuff yourself with fries-haha. Also the food at a fast food vegan restaurant will be stuffed with sodium

[impaul99]

If you're going to do it, I think you should firstly get really clear as to WHY you're doing it.

Meaning, why VEGGIE? Is it for HEALTH reasons, or ANIMAL WELFARE reasons? Will you sacrifice health to make a bit more profit?

I'm not saying you would, I'm just saying that you should get really clear on what you want to create so that you have a better chance of creating it. If for example your mission/intention/goal is "To bring healthy vegetarian choices to the fast food market." you might not even do it by opening up a fast food chain. Maybe, instead, you find yourself working at an already established fast food joint in charge of all their vegetarian choices dishes, where you work with them to bring vegetarian dishes that are healthy to the public at prices they can afford and at the same time the company makes $$$.

If your intention is to open a restaurant, that's different then bringing veggie dishes to the public.

This sounds like an awesome idea and if you're passionate about it, go for it! I'll eat there!

Just take some time to get clear on what is it actually that you want to accomplish. What's the end result. THEN look at how you'll do it, not the other way around.

Just my 2 cents.

Personally I think it's an awesome idea. THere's no reason why fast food + healthy food can't be brought together.

All the time at work at lunch I hear people saying "Where can we go that's fast, healthy and cheap?" and everyone's always saying "Nowhere".

If someone actually makes that happen, my guess is that they would become billionaires very quickly. Even taking "cheap" out of the equation and replacing it with "affordable" would still be a winning formula.

[bodhiavttas]

You probably know this already, but there's a wonderful little vegan fast food place in Pasadena, CA called Orean's Health Express, with burgers, (air) fries, shakes, soft serve... yum.

Orean the Health Express Inc. - About Orean's the Health Express

They actually might be vegetarian; it's unclear, they might use some lactose in their cheese, but I used to eat there every once in a while when I lived there (even if I'm vegan--for me veganism isn't about purity). It's not that healthy for you, anyway, and the portions are enormous. They seem to be doing well even if their service isn't the greatest. Across the street from KFC, McDonald's, etc.

I say it's a great idea, I'm totally with you and will buy your products.

Where would you start it? In Ohio?

[madgeylou]

great idea! i wish you much success! i am in a similar place of identifying what do i really want to do -- and entrepreneurism is where i'm landing as well, although i want to do for plus-sized clothing what you want to do for fast food -- make it good!

anyway, there is a place in brooklyn called "foodswings" that seems to get a lot of business. they play up the "vegan fast food" aspect -- it's not healthy, it's decadent and vegan.

i dont think it's exactly what you're going for, but i thought you might want to check out their menu and such:

Foodswings - NYC Restaurant & Menu Guide. Menus, Ratings, Reviews. New York City, NY

[Natasha]

*JOKING

You need to move back to Ohio first! lol

We NEED the healthy alternatives a lot more than those wishy washy Californians! lol


Ummm....Theres a Lebanese restarant near the Dayton Mall that has a whole section of Vegetarian foods......Except for that you would have the market cornered here! lol