
Eatsa: Quinoa-based fast food - jseliger
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/quinoa-is-the-new-big-mac
======
kevindong
I actually went to their new midtown Manhattan branch a couple days ago.

All in all, I liked it. I got a very generously sized falafel quinoa bowl for
~$7 with an iced tea for an additional $0.95. For midtown, that's actually an
incredible value. The food itself was good, nothing to rave about though.
Concerningly though, when I went in around 2:30pm on Friday, I was one of the
two customers there. The rest of the store was deserted.

There's no cashiers, just a bunch of self serve iPad stands with an clerk
walking around looking to see if I needed help. The app on the iPad used for
ordering was fast and fluid. My food was ready 2 minutes after I ordered.

~~~
ianai
Eh that experience sounds way too lonely.

~~~
kevindong
Very much so. I was originally planning on eating there, but when I saw the
emptiness, I picked the 'to go' option.

~~~
mwfunk
Why would it make a difference? If I'm eating alone, an empty dining area is
infinitely less awkward than a packed one.

~~~
ianai
Lonely was the wrong term. It sounds too sterile and empty to ever pull in the
revenue they're hoping to capture. If you want people to be going there in
large volumes then it probably needs to not be empty, duh. But it sounds like
they missed some sort of key factor.

------
_delirium
After reading the entire article, what I still don't get is: why quinoa?
Especially as regards this quote from owner David Friedberg:

 _" We've got to do two things: get healthy products down to a price point
that McDonald’s and Taco Bell are winning on, and offer products tasty enough
to disrupt the meat-focussed fast-food business ... We think the way to do it
is quinoa."_

Is quinoa really the best choice for those criteria? This feels more like
trying to go a bit more upmarket and tie in to the quinoa hype than really
looking for something that can produce McDonald's-level prices and appeal. I
mean, the first two things that come to mind when I think of quinoa are
"fairly expensive" and "doesn't taste great", so if I were looking for a low-
cost-and-tasty staple ingredient, it's not what I'd pick.

~~~
beloch
Quinoa has about twice the protein content of white rice, which is why some
people like it, nevermind the fact that putting a few beans in your rice gets
you the same nutrients for less money. Some people also like the taste (I do).
However, just because a meal has one healthy ingredient doesn't mean it's
healthy.

"The lunch bowls contain as much as thirty-two grams of fat and fourteen
hundred milligrams of sodium—on par with a Big Mac-and-large-fries combo,
which has twelve hundred milligrams of sodium and fifty-three grams of fat.
(Most Eatsa bowls have single-digit levels of saturated fats, however,
considerably lower than the levels in the combo meal.)"

Why is this stuff basically a deep fried salt-lick? Taste, probably. Like
McDonalds, it's not going to kill you if you indulge once in a while, but
don't kid yourself that this is something you can eat everyday without there
being some repercussions. Marketing this as "healthy" is highly deceptive.

"High sodium and fat content, which are associated with heart disease, may
counteract some of the health benefits of the vegetable-rich quinoa bowls. But
Friedberg is more interested in the grain’s planetary benefits. Animal feed,
he noted, supplies the calories for growing the entire animal, not just the
meat that’s sold as the end product..."

Justifying deceptive marketing of fast-food junk as health-food in order to
save precious planetary resources smacks of sophistry. This guy _could_ try to
produce cheap, healthy, environmentally friendly food if he wanted to, but he
wanted to be profitable instead. That's fine, but convincing people your junk
is healthy is a damned scummy way to go about it. It's killing humans to save
cows.

~~~
wcummings
Quinoa is low in protein but it is a _complete protein_. Handy for
vegetarians.

~~~
grenoire
So is white rice and beans. It's a complementary pair.

------
united893
I live literally above their first location, spoke to staff before they opened
and even peaked into their backroom.

On the outside it's gorgeous, pretty, white, but in the back it doesn't look
pretty. They've got almost a dozen staff in the back. All hispanic. Seems
cramped and not comfortable.

It feels bad, feels like we're just hiding the working class behind this
facade.

~~~
frakkingcylons
The back of the house is like that in every regular restaurant. Prep and most
cooking is done by low-paid (usually brown) workers, plus it's hot and cramped
all the time.

~~~
peteretep
I worked in two PizzaHut locations in the UK and it wasn't cramped, not was
the ethnic makeup of the kitchen substantially different from the rest of the
city.

------
mrob
Success will depend on the quality of the seasoning. Most people think plain
quinoa tastes worse than common grains like oats or wheat. Quinoa is still
fashionable with some health-conscious groups, but I don't think this can
sustain mass market appeal.

And if you do like the taste of quinoa and don't care about being fashionable,
try amaranth instead. It tastes very similar and has similar nutritional
qualities, but here in the UK it's about half the price.

~~~
drhodes
there's also millet, a staple of ancient china. It's the small round seed
commonly found in bird food.

~~~
patrickg_zill
Also a staple of the British diet , at least a few hundred years ago it was.

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kneel
Tried it once, I was excited about the idea of a quick take out meal.

They've eliminated waitstaff, cashiers, meat and tables yet their prices are
on par with all the other take out joints. The meal was small and I was still
hungry afterwards.

Felt like I was paying too much for too little. I still like the idea of their
quick take out but I get a better take out meal at the local thai joint.

~~~
devinplatt
For any reader interested in some menu facts:

The Eatsa App lists the calorie content of each bowl. They range between
400-700 calories, and cost $6.95.

Eatsa also offers side items for $2.25. They range between 100-300 calories.

------
legulere
> High [...] fat content [...] associated with heart disease

Isn't this disputed nowadays and pretty much agreed upon to not be true for
some kinds of fat like unsaturated fats?

~~~
jjawssd
Fat must be present combined in conjunction with inflammation to produce heart
disease in one specific way

------
tootie
There was a short-lived place in Manhattan called Zen Burger. They replicated
McDonald's down to the heat lamped burgers and reconstituted fries except it
was 100% vegetarian. Tasted pretty crummy but was really no better or worse
than a typical fast food burger.

I'm waiting for Impossible Burgers to take over.

[https://impossiblefoods.com/burger/](https://impossiblefoods.com/burger/)

~~~
asah
Just had one at Jardiniere (SF), it was perfectly decent, stunning only in its
banality. A little softer, and a bit less chewy. Still good with all the usual
toppings. Not as runny as I was told, but on the whole it was very easy to
forget you're eating plant matter. I could eat it everyday.

------
rweba
I went to their DC location on Friday.

It's really not THAT different than any other fast food place in terms of the
speed of service or the number of staff. Even the price ($6.95) was about the
same as what a typical fast food meal costs.

So I think the "disruptiveness" has been a bit exaggerated.

The quinoa portion was reasonably generous and tasted pretty good, but I don't
know that I would eat quinoa every day. I didn't realize that they had no meat
options before I got there.

As far as whether this model will become more pervasive, I'm not sure. But
even if it does, I don't see the big deal since they are not really that
different from what's already there.

Now, if they somehow got the costs to be MUCH CHEAPER than existing fast food
options (let's say $2.50 for a big bowl of quinoa), THAT would be a game
changer.

~~~
kneel
If they can beat all the other lunch spots on price they wouldn't be so empty.
Especially in college towns.

I hope this isn't a preview of the food industry's 'disruptive automation'
Everything cheaper for the restaurant, but the price is still the same for the
consumer.

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jayjay71
Eatsa has done a great job marketing itself as the automatic restaurant, so
much so that many people believe robots prepare their food (their kitchen is
just as labor intensive as any other restaurant). I actually spoke to their
engineering director a while ago and I think they are going to have a hard
time building any real robots (they are working on this and hired several
engineers to do so). For starters, they had to outsource building their
automatic cubbies - they couldn't build a moving door by themselves. But they
are hoping to build an autonomous food preparation system more sophisticated
and an order of magnitude cheaper than anything that exists today.

Something I see a lot is for someone with a lot of experience in pure software
engineering to delve into hardware or robotics, and think he'll be able to
just breeze through it (if it were so easy, there would be a lot more awesome
consumer robots everywhere). What I found particularly amusing was the way he
viewed it though. When I said robots are limited by the laws of physics, his
counterpoint was that software was limited by the speed of light. He was dead
serious, and to him that made the challenges comparable.

I look forward to seeing all the crazy food robots people concoct in the
coming years. I suspect most people will realize it's a lot harder than they
thought, and by the time the robot is useful it's too expensive to be
profitable. Most people are unaware of the many companies in past decades that
have tried and failed, including some that actually launched a product. This
is definitely my favorite - an automatic hamburger restaurant from the 60's.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE)

------
ebbv
They have a huge uphill battle against going national sticking with a
vegetarian menu. If their target is McDonald's something huge would have to
change to make that possible in the US. Chipotle was able to grow because they
have meat. Vegetarianism just isn't common enough here right now.

~~~
schoen
I went to Eatsa a few weeks ago (after finding it listed on HappyCow, a
vegetarian restaurant directory). I noticed at the time that Eatsa itself
never used the word "vegetarian" in its marketing materials, and indeed, it
doesn't seem to appear on their site (e.g. in
[https://www.eatsa.com/](https://www.eatsa.com/) or
[https://www.eatsa.com/story](https://www.eatsa.com/story)).

Elsewhere in the vegetarian world I've seen people refer to "plant-based food"
as an alternative to calling things vegetarian, presumably to avoid potential
negative reactions from some audiences.

Perhaps many non-vegetarian customers won't notice the absence of meat options
in context when ordering from the Eatsa interactive menu, because they're
being invited to choose from a set of presented options. (I know that
situation has been studied quite a bit in psychology, but I forget the
relevant key words.)

~~~
ebbv
> Perhaps many non-vegetarian customers won't notice the absence of meat
> options

In some areas that might be possible, but not where I live in the midwest. The
first question most people will have about each offering is "What kind of meat
is in it?"

Right or wrong that's america today, and for that to change something major
has to shift.

If Eatsa wants to be the driver of that change their meal offerings have to be
delicious and significantly cheaper than fast food that has meat in it (which
should be possible right since meat is so wasteful?)

~~~
curun1r
> ...their meal offerings have to be delicious and significantly cheaper than
> fast food that has meat in it (which should be possible right since meat is
> so wasteful?)

This would be the case if externalities were priced into meat production. But
meat producers don't pay for draining the water table, creating antibiotic-
resistant strains or the massive waste problems that usually accompany large-
scale meat production. I'm not among the militantly-anti-meat and even consume
some on occasion, so I'm not going to tell people how to live their lives or
what to eat, but we shouldn't be under the delusion that meat isn't more
expensive just because most of the costs will be paid by future generations.
If meat producers had to run sustainably, the cost of meat would be too high
for most people to afford on a regular basis.

------
lobster_johnson
I haven't tried Eatsa, but from the photos, the bowls look exactly like Inday
[1] (Broadway/E. 26th near Madison Square Park), which is superb.

Like Chipotle, you pick your own combination of ingredients, and it's heavily
skewed towards vegetarian options. Inday offers qinoa (actually a great mix of
qinoa, amaranth and teff), but I also love their "Not Rice" (shredded
cauliflower with a similar consistency to rice).

[1] [http://indaynyc.com](http://indaynyc.com)

~~~
allengeorge
If you like Inday and are willing to venture farther south consider Cava Grill
[1] - their bowls are quite good. Mediterranean, not Indian however.

[1] [http://cavagrill.com/locations](http://cavagrill.com/locations)

~~~
lobster_johnson
Nice, I will have to try that one out.

------
bhumi1102
I work very close to the one in San Francisco and have been there a few times.
I didn't realize this the first time, but you can completely customize your
bowl down to the garnish. This can be useful as some ingredients are much
better than others, but is time consuming. For the price it's not bad! but it
hasn't become my go-to lunch spot as it's lacking in the taste factor. I also
wish it had a different option for the base, in addition to quinoa (perhaps
brown rice), for someone who is not a fan of the quinoa texture.

------
pcr0
I live in Hong Kong and some McDonalds here sell gourmet burgers and quinoa.
If they really perceive it to be a threat I can see them rolling this out
worldwide.

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throwaway4891a
Reminds me of the Bolivian public health issues of forgoing native consumption
for cash crop export. [https://intercontinentalcry.org/the-mother-
grain/](https://intercontinentalcry.org/the-mother-grain/)

And, also how many pounds of Costco quinoa I still have stockpiled that needs
to be eaten.

------
bootload
_“The big issues are sourcing, labor, and price points,” Marion Nestle, a
professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, ... David
Friedberg, a former Google programmer with a degree in astrophysics, hopes to
overcome these challenges with a new vegetarian chain called Eatsa. ... “We
think the way to do it is quinoa.”_

Underwhelmed.

Though I can see this might be a good example of creating cheaper high quality
food, I wonder if the google ^wonderlic^ [0] has thought out the economic
implications of trying to monetise a regional specific grain from a third
world region?

    
    
       "Bolivian government nutrition programs 
        have begun to incorporate quinoa into 
        school breakfast and new mothers' 
        subsidies."
    

A quick check online yields an assortment of the impact, some positive [1],
some negative. [2] The fact the founder worked for Monsanto isn't promising.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test#History)

[1] _" Quinoa brings riches to the Andes"_

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-
andes-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-andes-
bolivia-peru-crop)

[2] _" It’s OK To Eat Quinoa"_

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/quinoa_bad_f...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/quinoa_bad_for_bolivian_and_peruvian_farmers_ignore_the_media_hand_wringing.html)

~~~
Tinyyy
Actually he didn't exactly 'work for Monsanto', he founded WeatherBill/The
Climate Corporation, which was acquired by Monsanto in 2013 (for 1.1Bn!).
Presumably he was 'resting and vesting' until his exit in 2015.

~~~
bootload
thx @Tinyyy, that throws this article [0] in a totally different light. Wonder
if any of that technology is going to be x-ferred to Eatsa?

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/founders-fund-leads-the-
cl...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/founders-fund-leads-the-climate-
corporations-colossal-50m-funding-round/)

~~~
monodeldiablo
There's no relevant technology to transfer. Besides, I believe Monsanto are
quietly winding down their acquisition. Does Climate even sell insurance
anymore? Last I heard, they're just a glorified app development studio for
Monsanto. $1.1B didn't buy them much West Coast street cred after all.

~~~
bootload
_" There's no relevant technology to transfer."_

Did you read the article? The grain is grown in one of the harshest
environments known a long way from markets. Any technology that allows farmers
insight into their crops would benefit them, the supply chain and customers.

~~~
monodeldiablo
I worked there. I'll reiterate: there's no relevant technology to transfer.
Monsanto quietly shut down Climate's product line.

~~~
bootload
_" I worked there."_

Hard to verify, but I'll take your word for it. Thanks for the inside
comments.

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mydpy
I've been to their Spear street location in San Francisco. It's excellent for
a quick and healthy (yet hearty) breakfast. It's novel to go inside and not
see people cooking the food you're enjoying.

~~~
derwiki
Not seeing people cooking the food you're enjoying is not unique to Eatsa.

------
beatpanda
I have tried to order food there three times in SF and was so creeped out I
had to walk away.

