546: Is Moonburger the Future of Fast Food? Jeremy Robinson-Leon Thinks So.

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. The core premise for Moonburger was how could we, through hospitality, help to reduce the impact of food consumption in America? I think that fundamentally the way to get people to reduce impact is to not hit them over the head with the message around cause, but instead just totally normalize it. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Jeremy Robinson-Leon is the founder of Moonburger, an ambitious chain of restaurants that's core focus is bringing high-quality fast food to the masses. I personally love Moonburger and have visited locations in Kingston, and there's also locations in Poughkeepsie and Brooklyn.

1:16On this episode, we hear about Jeremy's journey to opening these restaurants and how he enlisted the help of some big-name talent to assist him in developing a signature plant-based patty. We also hear about the company's pivot to serving beef and what this all means for future expansion. I'm rooting for Moonburger and had a great time catching up with this very cool founder. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:51Jeremy Robinson, Leon, welcome to This Is Taste. It's so great to meet you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's such an honor to be here. Thanks so much, Matt. I'm excited to talk about Moonburger. So I have to say, I'm personally a customer. I live in lower Hudson Valley, and you've opened in Kingston, New Paltz, and Poughkeepsie, which is like my backyard. You also have a spot in Brooklyn that's four locations. So we're going to get into what Moonburger is all about. but first i have to ask you you know you have a you have a little bit upstate you have a little bit in brooklyn where do you like to dine out right now you know what so the last six months uh when i've been in brooklyn getting the uh the store open here which opened in williamsburg in july there are really three spots that i stuck to and i went to repeatedly um it one uh three decker diner in greenpoint yeah yeah um good friends of mine uh up there they're doing an awesome job uh yeah reopening that uh taking that diner um from something that's been around for a long time and i think just keeping the uh in in i think a very um sweet authentic way kind of keeping the core of what that diner is but also just really i think elevating everything that they're putting out is really great um my dear friend anoop polarisetti on the moonburger culinary council um who was one of the people who helped us to develop the menu um he opened strange delight in Fort Green.

3:13Awesome restaurant. And then Joe's Pizza. That's the last one. Just a few blocks down from us in Williamsburg. And I always got to stop there whenever I'm in the neighborhood. I love those choices. And shout out to Anoop. I hope to have him on the show one day. Strangerlite's great. And we'll get in with the Culinary Council. And I didn't know there was a term for it. That's my highfalutin term for it. I think it sounds both a little kitsch and a little, you know. No, I love it. And you've got some great folks on there, friends of the show. But from the jump, you know, Moon Burger has big plans.

3:46You've got a really cool vision with aesthetics. And, of course, your menu, which, you know, in essence, it's a burger shop. And I'll let you get into what you're doing. But really, you're doing a QSR style burger. So, you know, why, you know, based your career and future by jumping into this multibillion dollar industry with with so much competition from the Shake Shacks and the McDonald's and the Wendy's to the more boutique spots? Why jump in? Yeah, you know, I had left a job in in PR running a corporate PR firm. I was there for 13 years as my first job out of college. And it was a it was a wonderful place.

4:26I had a great existence there. but at some point I was just like, you know what? I want new challenge, new life experience, new opportunity. I knew that I wanted to create a brand. And so I left. I had no plan for what I was going to do. I made the decision to leave before the pandemic. I left in the middle of the pandemic and I gave myself basically six months off to not even think about what I was going to do next. And at one point I woke up with the idea for Moonburger and I knew that I wanted to both create a brand in hospitality, but also one of my passions for my entire life, I think inspired by my father, who's an environmentalist, who's working clean energy my whole life, is the impact of what we eat, the environmental impact of what we eat.

5:05And so the core premise for Moonburger was how could we, through hospitality, help to reduce the impact of food consumption in America? Very simple question. And my proposition was, I think that big respect to everybody that's doing it in their own way. I think that fundamentally the way to get people to reduce impact is to not hit them over the head with the message around cause, but instead just totally normalize it. And I had the idea and then I spoke to a couple of my very good friends, Alison Roman, friend of the show. And I told them about it and I was like, what do you guys think of this?

5:42And they were like, yeah, cool. And we were off to the races. Such a great mission statement you just gave because, you know, cause marketing or just cause-based businesses, the cause can get in a way. But the cause is also important. So you have to negotiate that. So when you walk into a Moonburger, the cause is not plastered across the top of your menu. And that was the thing. And I said, OK, so let's look at the impact of the entire food system. And what is the worst contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impact? Factory farmed commodity beef production, period, far and away.

6:20And I said, OK, so let's start with that problem. And so in order to do that, how could we normalize an alternative to that, which at the time 2021 when we launched, plant-based meat was starting to really take off. And I said, how could we get plant-based meat into the hands and mouths of so many more people in America than are already bought in? And the way to do that is not to say, headline, come because it's better for the world, come because it's better for human health, come because it's better for animals. No, it's just to say, come for a really great burger and awesome experience, period.

6:52If you care about any of those things, that's great. But I said, let's strip out all of the cause message from everything that we're doing, totally normalize it so that somebody who doesn't care about any of those things feels just as welcome and interested in coming in as somebody who's super bought into any of those causes. I love it. So there's nothing in our message at all ever about any of those. Yeah, yeah. But clearly, if you read the website and visit the shop, you're going to see that there's some big ideas here. OK, so how did you decide on Kingston for your opening? You know, I love Kingston.

7:19We've talked about a lot on the show. Yeah. And this is on the show in the next, probably before this airs, the episode will be up. Great dude, good friend. Great dude, you know, like kind of the mayor of Kingston Food in some ways. But like when you're pulling off the highway kind of and you're seeing the Moonburger right there by a gas station, how did you find this spot? And like tell me, how did you figure out the design of it? Because I love it. It's really dope. Thank you so much. It was, you know, it was a, that spot had been on and off the market for a number of years. It was it was formerly called the Ice Cream Castle.

7:52Oh, yeah. And so what is it? It's a hundred year old house that that this family had basically kind of slapped on this kitschy castle motif, like bolted it onto this house and turned into an ice cream shop. and it was really sweet and charming. It had been on and off the market. I was constantly fantasizing. And I remember a couple of years before I had the idea for Moonberger, I had texted Allison and Noop. I was like, we got to do something here. There's something cool that you could do in this space. It was right off of the thruway exit 19. It's right there. It's just like ready. Lots of cars.

8:25Lots of cars. Within probably two weeks of the idea for Moonberger surfacing into my mind and me starting to talk to a couple of friends about it, I had put an offer on that space. And I was like, it was 10 minutes from my house upstate in Kingston. I live in about five miles south in Marbeltown. And, um, and I was like, I think the fundamental flaw with this place is that it's got an incredibly small parking lot. And so the only way to make this work is to make it drive through only. And so when I think other people saw that as a, a real detriment because you had a four car parking lot, I said, let's just make that part of the experience.

9:04Who's ever heard of a plant-based, fully drive-thru restaurant in America? I mean, maybe that exists somewhere, but that was also part of the novelty at the beginning. Yeah, it really was novel. And you're driving through. And let's talk culinary, you know. Yeah. And we'll say before the big change this month, it was plant-based burgers, fries, and plant-based shakes. And you're using Oatly as kind of your base, but you've got a cool... So, like, how are you thinking about this menu? Like, you know, you got very limited options. You're doing plant-based burgers. I mean, I guess you probably did some market research to figure out how people need this stuff.

9:35How did you get into that menu? Well, what I saw in the initial kind of conceptualizing of the Edifer Moon Burger was like the vast majority of other spots that are primarily plant-based in America were primarily targeting people who are vegetarians, vegans, or heavily flexitarian. So how could we reach the audience that really excited me was meat eaters, like the mainstream of America with that plant-based product. And so I said, number one, we got to just create an awesome burger and not compare it against other plant-based burgers. But let's bring this team together and let's try every single other QSR, fast, casual burger and make sure that what we're creating is as good as any of those.

10:14And oh, by the way, there are some other things I think are important in that we need dairy. I think although dairy has impact as well, I think dairy is essential for reaching the mainstream. I think that plant-based cheese has a lot of potential. I still think that is a ways to go until it can kind of be within parity. Yeah, diet needs to step it up a little bit. Totally. But then it was like these friends, which I'm so fortunate to have, are just some of the most talented culinary minds and recipe developers in the country. And so bringing together Allison and Emil and Noop and Squad and just like going to town over a summer on my deck, drinking wine, drinking beer and just messing around with Impossible and burgers and just like developing something that I think stood apart from every other plant-based burger that existed and could live by itself as something that somebody who loves meat could come in and be like, damn, that's a good burger.

11:06Not a great plant-based burger. That's a great burger. Yeah, no, definitely. That's the way that you should be thinking about plant-based. This is what we think about superiority burger. We don't think we don't say the word plant based. 100 percent. And to be clear, it's a meal static from from formerly BA, really talented editor and journalist, Alison Roman. We know Alison. And then a new who I think is like you got operator, you got like marketing. I mean, the guy does everything. So so you got these these culinary rock stars. You get some design folks, too. And by the way, Susan Kim was there for some of those just hanging out.

11:38Oh, that's cool. Lauren Stonick, a meal's partner and an amazing chef and food stylist and talent and just like some other kind of friends of the crew that just all came together to create this stuff. I feel you're just missing out. Wow. You got like B.A. Alex Lau shot our menu. OK. Actually, the current menu photos. Very cool. And Lauren styled it. Oh, well, there you go. I was like, OK, well, where's Alex shot Creole World, the book I worked on? So he it makes sense. All in the family. So funny. I brought that up. But really, it's cool that you have these culinary, you know, this board. You've got these locations.

12:16Let's talk about locations, actually, before we get into the big pivot. So these locations are all in this Lower Hudson Valley area, Poughkeepsie, New Paltz is a college town, and then, of course, Kingston. So why focus on the Lower Hudson Valley? I mean, I'd really love to know what you see in the area and why it works for you. You know, I lived in Williamsburg for 13 years until I moved upstate full time at the beginning of the pandemic. I had bought my house a handful of years earlier. And the Hudson Valley has always held a really dear place in my heart in that I went to college there in Poughkeepsie.

12:54So that was kind of my first introduction to the area to Vassar College with a friend of the pod, James Harris. So throwing fits. Oh, right. Cool. One of my close friends. And so what I love about the Hudson Valley is the vibrancy of the food scene. There is also, I think, a real opportunity for us to reach a wide swath of America, starting in Kingston and going to New Paltz and going to Poughkeepsie. We get folks who are coming up as weekenders from the city, from Brooklyn, from Manhattan, from elsewhere in New York. We get people who have relocated up. We also get people who have lived in Ulster County in the Hudson Valley for their entire lives.

13:38Liberals, moderates, conservatives, old people, young people, all across the income spectrum. And I think that that is the thing that excites us about Moonburger, which is we can be so many different things to different people and have a lot of dimensionality, not just one note for one particular demographic. Yeah. So you got the data from these three locations and they've all I mean, I have to say the Poughkeepsie is in a gas station. It's in a gas station. That's so dope. Inside the that I mean, that was like a dream. I mean, was that hard to get that lease? Credit to our landlords over there who actually reached out after the Wall Street Journal magazine did a piece on us in 2022.

14:08And they were like, hey, we love what you're doing. And credit to them for thinking, I think, outside the box and very future forward for a plant based burger spot to put in a very traditional space. And to me, that was like the that was like the most disruptive thing that we could do. Could we put in the most American place possible, which is like inside a convenience store at a gas station? And so we created this where you kind of walk in and you see a Moonburger space and then you walk through a threshold into our restaurant. You were just completely enveloped by it in a way that like I think nothing else exists in a gas station like that in America.

14:42To me, that's an awesome model for a gas station or an airport or a stadium or something else. Yeah, so you nailed this aesthetic of putting yourself within a larger institution, does that make sense? So you're thinking about scale here. You're thinking about different formats and fitting it into the gas station. By the way, as an aside, if you drive through Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, you're getting great food in gas stations. Such a great history down south with food in gas stations. It's cool, and I feel like maybe in the future we'll up our game in the Northeast with that. But very cool that you're in Poughkeepsie.

15:13Okay, you opened in Brooklyn, so you got this data from these three locations. What are you thinking about the Brooklyn Diner? I mean, we have a lot of plant-based spots and we have a lot of options with the burgers, of course. And really, what's that been like? Yeah. So it has really been a dream and totally surreal for me as somebody who lived in Williamsburg, like I said, for 13 years from 07 to 2020. And over that time, and certainly for many generations before me, there was just so much change in the neighborhood. and then to go back in this new capacity and actually be opening a restaurant.

15:48If you had told me when I left Williamsburg five years ago that I would be back and opening a restaurant on Bedford and North 10th, I would have said, you're completely nuts. But yeah, I mean, it's just I'm so grateful for the excitement, all the press, the people coming to the store. I think the excitement for initially coming in as Moonburger 1.0, And I know we'll get to Moon Burger 2.0. Yeah, I've been teasing it. Yeah, and then this kind of new phase for us. But it's a lot of fun for me to be in the neighborhood, especially because we have so many friends that have restaurants, who have spaces that have been there a long time, that are new.

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18:31That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. So how are the businesses doing? We talk about cost of goods a lot on the show, and it's a very low margin business, especially with real estate. Stress is you've got a little bit better real estate situation upstate, but still, you know, you're operating for restaurants right now. Yep. How's it going out there? It's knock on something over here. Yeah, yeah. Incredibly well.

19:06Awesome. And you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, we pay close attention to National Restaurant Association stats of restaurants across the country in our category. I mean, across all categories. And it's certainly a tough time for restaurants. Yeah, food costs, you know, same store sales, traffic, et cetera, et cetera. I think that by and large, we've been able to buck most industry trends and also, I think, plant-based trends. But we also were sort of looking ahead to what the future might hold and how we could continue to be, I think, at the forefront of what we wanted to create with the fast food of the future.

19:38And that kind of created the idea for Moonburger 2.0. I mean, scale is impressive, going from one to four in this short period. Labor of love. I mean, truly. But once you get to four, I mean, eight feels probably like something different. But maybe something closer than going from one to two. One to two was certainly a big jump. It's the hardest. Yeah, certainly a big jump. But, you know, credit to our team. You know, we have just a truly fantastic team. Each of our restaurants, our four GMs, our team that supports them, and then the teams at the restaurants are just absolutely terrific. And the thing that we're really excited about is, you know, we want to take it one step at a time and do each step right.

20:16But we're totally primed for continuing to grow this thing because we just have the systems in place now where it is very stable. Yeah, awesome. Well, I love to hear that. I love that things are working out and successful. I'm sure there'll be more locations open. Okay, to the big pivot. So I got to know you as a plant-based burger shop. And really, I love the way that you frame this as an ecocentric, good for the earth thing without blasting it over my head. But really, the culinary side is excellent. I love the shakes. I love the texture of a plant-based shake. The fries are excellent. I remember taking them to some friend's house at your New Pulse location.

20:54And they carry well. That's good, too. So I always knew it was a plant-based thing. And then we had been emailing a month ago. And then I started doing the prep. and I go to your website, I'm like, oh, you're doing beef now. And I guess my first instinct is like, okay, well, clearly the veggie thing didn't work. That's like my first instinct. But then I read your really thoughtful note and something really struck me. And you made the really clear indication that people are eating more beef than ever, or meat than ever today than any time in the recent history. So clearly there's a real demand for beef out there.

21:36So how did you decide to square this? And now you're serving both your plant-based burger and beef burgers. Yes. Yeah. You know, so going back to the original premise for Moonburger is, again, how could we help to create the greatest impact possible by reaching the most people possible in America with a way to reduce the environmental impact of what we consume? And there's nothing about what we created that was ever dogmatic. It was always as practical as possible. What is the best way to answer that question to solve for that through hospitality? And so we, you know, we of course pay really close attention to the currents in the plant-based space.

22:23And it's probably no surprise to any of your listeners who are very tapped in that plant-based was taking off, going nuclear a few years ago. And then it started to kind of level and then it started to decline. This is overall sales of plant-based meat. Overall sales, but you'll also look at the stock prices too of these publicly traded companies. They've had some real difficulty. Totally. And we, and again, I'm so grateful for the fact that we'd been able to be incredibly resilient. So while a lot of our peers in the plant-based fast food space were closing restaurants and plant-based meal sales were going down, our sales have continued to be incredibly strong.

22:57Our comps are really good. Our momentum is really high. We opened the Brooklyn location in July. We get all this wonderful press, incredibly moving to me. People come out, people are excited. But we looked ahead and said, if the current trend continues in plant-based meat, you know, we can buck this trend for now and we are strong and we have momentum. But what does two years from now look like? And so I said it was very simple. What is the best way to continue to fulfill what we believe is the fast food of the future? And to me, the next step is if people are going to eat more meat. But in fact, like you said, more, I think it's a recent study came out, 7 % more people identify as meat eaters in 2024 than 2022.

23:41Yeah. I mean, it's the protein, right? It's the protein. People really are getting linked up with eating more protein. And also GLP-1s. Totally. I must say that's probably something to do with it too. And I think there are, you know, we could do a whole podcast about what has contributed to kind of changing perceptions around plant-based meat. But said, look, let's look at the reality. I am very bullish on plant-based long term. I think that is the direction that we are heading. I think we are going through in the market, I think, a little bit of a correction. And so we said, what's the next best thing is if people are going to eat more meat, we're going to give them the best meat we possibly can.

24:15So what is a significant improvement over factory farm commodity beef? Regenerally farmed beef from farms in New York State. And so if people are going to eat more meat, we're going to give them meat that whether they have a beef burger at Moonburr or whether they have an Impossible Burger at Moonburr. Either way, if they're not eating that other thing from one of our big major national competitor chains that is far, far worse, that's a win. And so it was really simple at that point. And so we sourced from a couple of farms up in Seneca Falls. We brought all our GMs up there. A couple of them have never been to a farm before.

24:50It was a really special experience. We now have a relationship directly with that farmer. And we're serving some of the best beef that you can get anywhere in fast food, fast casual. I mean, this stuff is incredibly expensive, Matt. Yeah. And the reason that we're able to do that is because Impossible was even more expensive. Yeah. Than some of the most expensive beef on the market. What's your pricing right now? So our burger is$7.59. Yeah, cool. Yeah, so that's basically five guys' prices, right? That's in range with what five guys and kind of others in that category are doing. And the fact that we're able to serve the beef that we are from farms in New York State is like, to me, it is a really special thing.

25:32I mean, that's terrific. And listen, if you hit the touchscreen at McDonald's these days, it's going to be$20. I mean, it's going to be 20. So, like, obviously, cost of goods are, we're very aware of them. We are sensitive to them and the pricing of these menu items. But if you're in the$7 to$8 range for a burger, man, you're competitive. You're really, really, you're there. So it doesn't feel like a retreat. I think people will probably assume that, right? That, like, okay, like, Jeremy's a smart guy, but it didn't quite work out. So, but no, I'm buying this, man. I think you're doing a cool thing and I think it's very smart.