Amy’s Meatless Drive-Thru Is Coming to Southern California

In 2022, vegetarian fast-food restaurant Amy’s Drive Thru will open new areas in Aliso Viejo and Thousand Oaks, CA—its first areas exterior of Northern California. Created by the founders of iconic vegetarian model Amy’s Kitchen, the chain makes a speciality of inexpensive meatless quick meals, together with natural burgers, pizza, mac and cheese, burritos, and milkshakes, plus a full breakfast menu that includes vegan sausage-and-cheese sandwiches, hash browns, and yogurt parfaits. All menu objects might be personalized to be totally vegan or gluten-free. 

Amy’s Drive Via first launched in 2015 with its flagship location in Rohnert Park. Its wildly profitable opening day attracted greater than 500 individuals who waited in line for greater than an hour. The corporate opened a modified takeout location inside Terminal 1 of the San Francisco International Airport in 2019 earlier than increasing to a second drive-thru location in Corte Madera, CA in 2020, taking on a shuttered 4,125-square-foot Denny’s restaurant. A fourth location is deliberate for later this 12 months in Roseville, CA.

Its new Thousand Oaks location was dwelling to the previous Mimi’s Cafe, and the Aliso Viejo location was a Romano’s Macaroni Grill, which can be remodeled right into a 4,200-square-foot restaurant with a patio and a drive-through. The 2 new Southern California areas are a part of the corporate’s bigger plans to quickly develop up and down the West Coast inside the subsequent 5 years.

Dedication to sustainability

From the packaging to restaurant design, Amy’s Drive Via goals to function as sustainably as doable, striving for zero waste and 0 influence at every location. In 2020, the corporate grew to become one of many first and solely B Corp Licensed fast-food eating places—which means it balances function and earnings by contemplating the influence of its enterprise selections on its staff, clients, suppliers, group, and the surroundings. 

The chain’s Corte Madera location, as an example, has been outfitted with 42 photo voltaic panels, a “dwelling roof” full of vegetation to offer habitats for pollinators, two electrical car-charging stations, and 47 parking areas for automobiles (and 12 bike racks). “Our mission at Amy’s Drive Via is to make natural and scrumptious meals accessible for everybody,” Amy’s Drive Via president Dave Wolfgram stated. 

Supporting group

Past its dedication to sustainability, mother or father firm Amy’s Kitchen additionally goals to help its group. Final 12 months alone, the corporate donated greater than 150,000 vegan meal merchandise to meals banks and 6,000 masks to native hospitals to help healthcare staff and people in want throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The donation was given to meals banks close to its headquarters in Sonoma County, CA, in addition to in Medford, OR, and Pocatello, ID, the place its manufacturing vegetation are situated. The corporate additionally offered meals from its Amy’s Drive Via areas to Bay Space hospitals, medical employees, and first responders.

Moreover, the corporate dedicated to donating $500,000 to organizations working to finish police brutality and help Black empowerment following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and numerous others. Internally, Amy’s can also be working to handle and educate its workforce members on issues of unconscious bias and systemic oppression. “First, we wish to acknowledge the truth that problems with fairness and justice haven’t all the time been a public precedence right here at Amy’s, as we thought that merely being sort to everybody and feeding all of you had been sufficient,” the corporate stated. “We now perceive that to be silent on these points is to be a part of the issue, and that addressing and educating ourselves deeply on problems with unconscious bias and systemic oppression are one thing that every one folks and all organizations in America should tackle.”