Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,63

it without a drive-thru.”

Like a number of fast-food chains, Chick-fil-A and Arby’s scheme to capture younger and more discerning customers by relying in part on innovations once unthinkable for purveyors of $4 sandwiches: apps that let you use your phone to order and pay ahead, employees that take your order and money while you’re still in a line, automated cashiers, fast-food home delivery via Uber and other services, and even office catering. “The fact that we do sixtyish percent of our business through drive-thru is because people are in their cars,” Brown explained of traditional markets. “Here in New York, we’ll be getting all this foot traffic. I’m not worried at all.”

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Another heavily stressed component of the fast-casual experience is the ability to obsessively customize what you order. This consumer-empowering possibility has always existed in fast food, but what many fast-casual restaurants have done is make every customer the manager of the restaurant assembly line. You walk in, you complain about the line, you wait in the line anyway, you hurriedly gesture at the toppings you want inside or on top of your salad, burrito, burger, or bowl, and you try not to seem like too much of a demanding jerk about it.

Although fast-food restaurants have built this kind of customization into their apps, few chains have taken a wholesale leap toward the fast-casual model. Back in Columbus, Wendy’s was in the midst of test-marketing that very concept at its new store. As I approached the counter, I came upon a “Build Your Sandwich” menu, an emulator of fast-casual burger joints like Five Guys. For a set cost, a fussier diner could ignore the traditional Wendy’s menu and design his or her own burger or chicken sandwich from a long list of bread, cheese, sauce, and toppings options. Forget Dave’s Hot ’n Juicy! Suddenly, the dream of ordering a weird three-patty burger with Asiago cheese and barbecue sauce on a pretzel bun was not only possible, but encouraged.*

Beneath the beef and chicken options on the “Build Your Sandwich” board, however, an even bolder, more progressive consumer experiment was underway: Wendy’s was test-marketing a black-bean veggie burger. For some vegetarians and public-health warriors alike, the veggie burger has stood in as the impossible dream, a vessel of corrective (and gas-inducing) hope and normalcy, the one item that, if adopted by the mainstream, could perhaps shift the dark balance of the fast-food world toward the light.

In 2014, White Castle raised some eyebrows when it introduced sliders made with Dr. Praeger’s brand premade veggie patties. Burger King has also offered a Morningstar Farms–produced veggie burger since 2002, and for a brief moment, it had been rumored that the company might start selling some of its more successful vegetarian sandwiches from its Indian menus to other vegetarian-heavy markets around the world. Despite some pressure, McDonald’s has only had short-lived flirtations with veggie burgers over the years, although some vegetarians rejoiced when the company introduced its all-day breakfast in late 2015, which immediately made sought-after protein more widely available. But if successful, Wendy’s black-bean burger—a “custom blend with black beans, corn, and bell peppers”—might just be the first internally developed national fast-food veggie burger offered in the United States.

The cashier at Wendy’s explained that the veggie burger was being tested at only one other store, not far from where we were. Next, she patiently shepherded me through the building process, suggesting that I try spring mix as a topping, along with the toasted multigrain bun, a big heavily sesamed affair with rolled oats and quinoa. I paid my $5 tab and took a paper cup to the store’s specialty Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, which looked like a NASA-built Wurlitzer jukebox. It had 127 mesmerizing, head-scratching flavors of soda, including Coke Raspberry, Diet Barq’s Vanilla, and Sprite Zero with Orange.

From the lounge-like décor to its tyranny-enabling customizable burgers, this tiny Wendy’s seemed like the epicenter of an evolution, signaling the future of quick-service dining. Then there was the black-bean burger. Americans weren’t just consuming more lean proteins like chicken, they were also eating less meat overall. A few months later, in early 2016, Wendy’s expanded the test market for its black-bean burger from two stores to three cities—the rest of Columbus, along with Salt Lake City, Utah, and Columbia, South Carolina—placing PETA and vegetarian blogs in the unlikely position of advocating that its followers run out to a fast-food chain and make a product there successful. By the end of the summer, however, the test