At Portland’s New Vegan Burger Drive-Thru Face Plant, Fast-Food Classics Get the Molly Baz Treatment

The first thing that comes to mind when picturing an all-American fast-food drive-thru probably isn’t a vegan cheeseburger, but Matt Plitch wants to change 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 familiar classics like cheeseburgers, fries, nuggets, and shakes developed by cookbook author and mayo influencer Molly Baz, who is Face Plant’s head of culinary development.

Face Plant has been in the works since 2021, when Plitch went vegan and realized his options were limited for quick, convenient, and affordable plant-based dinners. Working long days at a start-up, he didn’t have the time to sit down in one of Portland’s many vegan restaurants or the funds to sustain dining out all the time. During his first month after transitioning to a vegan diet, Plitch lived off a diet of Burger King Impossible Whoppers, which didn’t feel right to him. “I’ll never forget going through the drive-thru and ordering my number six, no dairy, and feeling a bit like being nourished by a company that didn’t really resonate with me in terms of what [I’m] all about,” he says. Realizing he had an opportunity to fill what he saw as a hole in the market, Plitch reached out to Baz, who he knows through her husband, Ben Willett.

Baz, who is not vegan, saw Plitch’s proposal to reimagine vegan hamburgers as an intriguing challenge. “I had never been someone who had taken pleasure in eating a plant-based burger before,” she says, “I feel like there has been just so much innovation in plant-based foods, but somewhere along the way, flavor got a little overlooked and lost.” Baz saw the opportunity to create something that she, as a meat-, would happily choose to eat. “It’s amazing that companies like Impossible have innovated and come as far as they have,” she says. “We have fake meat that bleeds, and that’s incredible, but if it doesn’t taste as good as [meat], then we’re never going to change the eating behaviors and patterns of meat s in America, myself included.”

Using herself as a guinea pig and an Impossible Foods patty as the base, Baz began to experiment in her kitchen with different seasoning mixes and techniques to amp up the patty’s flavor. “I’m kind of like the perfect target for it, because I try not to eat anything that’s not delicious,” she says. “Frankly, I avoid things that aren’t delicious.”

After three years of development, Baz and Plitch have landed on a proprietary spice blend for the burger and chicken-less nuggets at Face Plant; both menu items will use Impossible Foods products as the base. “The intention of the blend is to create a mouth-watering kind of sensation of juiciness, smokiness, brightness, and fattiness,” Baz says. “All those things that you associate with eating a beef burger.” The burgers at Face Plant will resemble a McDonald’s burger — the patty goes out somewhere between a smash and char-grilled burger. The classic comes with ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese, while the more deluxe option adds in tomatoes and a vegan mayo-based burger sauce. Face Plant isn’t the first fast-food burger restaurant to revamp Impossible Foods and other already-established vegan products for its menu. Los Angeles’s Mr. Charlie’s, a plant-based play on McDonald’s, uses the brand’s patties for its Not a Cheeseburger, while the Not Chicken Nuggets are made using Tindle nuggets.

Plitch and Baz have also developed a dipping sauce for the restaurant’s nuggets. “For me, the litmus test is, do I want another bite?” Baz says. “Am I just dying for another bite? Because if not, then we failed at the mission.”

As Plitch began to think about Face Plant, the drive-thru model crystallized as the approach he wanted to take; he sees his target audience as the McDonald’s customer who is looking for a cheap and convenient meal that fits into their busy schedule. In contrast to fast food chains that are automating their customer service, Plitch sees interactions between customers and staff as an essential part of the restaurant. In this case, staff will come out to the cars and meet drivers in the lane to take their orders In-N-Out style, instead of customers ordering through an intercom.

Plitch sees the restaurant’s price point as another factor making Face Plant accessible to Portland’s already avid fast-food customers. Since 2019, fast food prices have skyrocketed, with the cost of a Big Mac rising from $3.99 to $7.99 in some regions. At Face Plant, items will be within 50 cents to a dollar of their meat-based competitors, with burgers coming in between $5 and $7, and combos costing between $10 and $11.

Face Plant’s mission seemingly goes beyond just the burgers and the customer experience. To Plitch, opening a plant-based chain is a path to reducing carbon emissions and pushing back against climate change. While there have been major advancements in the energy and transportation sectors, he says that there’s still something to be desired with what and how people eat. But instead of just targeting the smaller vegan audience, Plitch wants to offer an alternative that people can choose over a Wendy’s or Burger King. “We are not trying to build the best vegan fast-food chain, or fast-food chain for vegans or vegetarians or people who are plant curious,” he says. “The only way we achieve the mission is by building a better fast-food experience and menu than the meat-based competition.”

While the project has been under wraps for three years, both Baz and Plitch are just excited for people to try what they’ve been working on — and the impact the business could have. “If I can successfully create something that people find really delicious, then I have participated in what could be a massive change … changing habits around the world in terms meat consumption,” Baz says. “So it’s obviously a pretty tall order, but just excited for people to taste.”

For Plitch, the flagship is the beginning of what he hopes will be a chain that can expand far beyond Portland, Oregon. But right now, he’s focused on starting to welcome customers in. “Nothing matters more than finally having this gift and incredible honor of serving people delicious food,” Plitch says.

Face Plant

Face Plant

Face Plant

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