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Would you like sprouts with that?
story Jessica McElfresh | photo Zac Goodwin
Inside Laughing Planet Café in Eugene, customer Ben Falkin peers over the colorful counter crowded with plastic dinosaur toys, watching as the server mixes his smoothie. “You can watch them cut up the beet for the Carrot Apple Beet Smoothie,” he says once the chilled blend is safely in his grasp. “I come here regularly because the people are great and the food is quick and convenient.”
Falkin is among a growing number of people who patronize healthy fast food cafés throughout the country. For the past few years, cafés promoting quick, delicious, and healthful foods have sprouted nationwide in the casual dining sector.
“[Organic food is] going to be the fastest-growing segment of the fast restaurant business,” says Sam Fromartz, journalist and author of Organic, Inc. “Health is in the DNA of organic food,” Fromartz adds. “That’s part of its core mission.”
Laughing Planet grew from founder Richard Satnick’s search for eateries that served nutritious and convenient foods. In 1995, Satnick opened his first “Planet” in Indiana (named after the image of a fed-up planet laughing off human folly). To launch the menu, he went on a pilgrimage to the San Francisco Bay Area to observe and taste the one food he considers perfect: the burrito.
In 2000, Satnick brought Laughing Planet’s signature burritos to Portland, and later to Eugene. Inside the café, you won’t find endorsements or manifestos of sustainability or nutrition; you will find eclectic art, funky music, and laid-back attitudes. “We get people to eat more intelligently, even if they don’t mean to.” One strategy: his to-go burritos are wrapped tightly in tin foil, designed to fit perfectly inside bicycle cup holders while minimizing waste.
Eugene’s Café Yumm! builds on the fundamentals of beans and rice, spiced by their trademark sauce. Co-founder Mary Ann Beauchamp developed the sauce — a zesty mix of nuts, beans, and spices — as a means to entice her young daughter to eat healthy food. She opened the first of several cafés eleven years ago.
In 2007, Café Yumm! started franchising, with a location in Bend and four more planned for Portland and Corvallis. John Shickich, the company’s franchise mastermind, insists that Café Yumm! isn’t out to change the world. “We just want to deliver soul-satisfying, deeply nourishing, and beautiful food from lower on the food chain with less environmental impact.”