American fast food is suffering a serious crisis in confidence. Among my own acquaintances, there are many parents who refuse to allow their children to set foot in a McDonald’s. After reading Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (published in 2001) and seeing Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (released in 2004), these families won’t expose their tender, malleable offspring to the sinister predations of Big Burger.
But that doesn’t mean that these parents don’t still have a prurient craving for fast food, which is a fact that has not gone unexploited by several entrepreneurs. Right now, there is a burgeoning population of “green” fast-food restaurants in the county that offer all of your salty/greasy favorites paired with the promise of a clean conscience. The latest to open is Bareburger, which is located in Hartsdale and prepares its burgers/fries/deep-fried pickles using only pasture-raised meats and non-GMO ingredients. The concept for the small franchise—with 18 stores in New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, and now Westchester—was developed by Euripides Pelekanos, a Brooklyn club owner, in the post-Fast Food Nation world in 2002. The first outpost of Bareburger opened in Astoria, Queens, in 2009.
From the outset, Bareburger vowed to use only “organic ingredients free of hormones, pesticides, and other unsavory elements.” Meanwhile, many of the building materials used in the construction of Bareburger locations are either sustainably sourced or reclaimed. The chain is proud of its trademark tin ceilings, which are reused materials from demolished barn roofs. To lure even the most virulently anti-Big-Burger parents, Bareburger offers an analog to the McDonald’s Happy Meal that includes a choice of sides, among them healthy baby carrots and apple slices. Plus, Anderson Cooper cited Bareburger as the source of his favorite veggie burger, so it’s hip.
The interior at Bareburger includes either sustainably sourced or reclaimed building materials, e.g., tin ceilings made from demolished barn roofs
Meanwhile, in 2002—the same year Euripides Pelekanos invented Bareburger—the first Elevation Burger debuted in Arlington, Virginia. The international chain, which has outlets as far away as Bahrain and Kuwait, has two locations in Westchester. The first debuted in 2011 in the Rye Ridge Shopping Center; the second, at Westchester’s Ridge Hill in Yonkers. Daniel Magnus, who owns Elevation’s franchise rights for Westchester County Fairfield County, plans to open several more Elevation outlets locally.
Like Bareburger, Elevation offers only organic, pasture-raised meats and also offers two versions of a veggie burger: One is vegetarian (it contains cheese) and the other is vegan (it’s wholly plant-based). Most daringly, when you consider that supernaturally crispy, pre-frozen shoestrings are the french-fry standard set by McDonald’s, Elevation cuts its fat batons from whole potatoes in-house and then cooks them in olive oil.
Like most of the green wave of fast-food outlets, Elevation also makes environmental claims that include the policy of transferring all of the waste materials from its construction sites to recycling plants for salvage before they are eventually sunk into landfills. Elevation uses Energy Star-rated appliances and compact florescent and LED lighting. Each outlet features renewable bamboo flooring, compressed sorghum tabletops, and low- or no-VOC paints and sealants. All of the paper goods unwrapped on those sorghum tabletops are made with high post-consumer content.
While the origin of Chipotle Mexican Grill in Denver, Colorado, in the 1990s precedes the one-two punch of Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me, the chain of Tex-Mex restaurants certainly exploded after those dual muckrakers hit. Eventually, stock in Chipotle was traded on the New York Stock Exchange, but its origins were incredibly simple. Its founder, a CIA graduate named Steve Ells, thought to offer a sleeker, more corporate-looking version of the Mexican-owned taquerias that he found on corners all over San Francisco. The model works, even in Westchester, where we have a wealth of excellent taquerias. Chipotle’s two Westchester outlets in Yonkers and Rye Brook debuted to thronged dining rooms. (A third is scheduled to open on Main Street in White Plains before summer’s end.)
As with Elevation and Bareburger, Chipotle’s marketing stresses the purity of its cruelty-free ingredients. Chipotle’s beef and pork are pasture-raised on vegetarian diets, and the milk that goes into Chipotle’s cheese is hormone-free. However, as in the entire green wave of fast-food restaurants, it pays to read between the lines. Nowhere does its website claim that Chipotle’s chicken is also free-range, and only 40 percent of the beans (that are a key ingredient in most dishes) are certified organic. Also, while the chain claims to strive for the lowest possible environmental impact with sustainable materials in its buildings, details available to support this statement are few. That said, Chipotle does have an emblematic outlet in Gurnee, Illinois, that features an electricity-generating wind turbine and a cistern that uses rainwater for irrigation.
Is the new green wave of fast-food restaurants any better for your family than the original versions? The answer depends on whether you’re gullible enough to think that burgers, fries, and shakes are a reasonable substitution for a wholesome, home-cooked meal. (They’re not.) But these new restaurants do offer local parents a slew of intriguing justifications for the fast food habits they established long ago at McDonald’s and Burger King.