Veggies—the New Fast Food

The Change That Led to Change

For White, the deci­sion to spe­cial­ize in veg­e­tar­ian cui­sine was, at first, a strictly busi­ness deci­sion. “I’ve been in the restau­rant busi­ness for 40 years, and I’ve owned about eight or nine restau­rants,” he said. “Around 20 years ago I met a girl named Tanya Petrovna in Redondo Beach, California. My restau­rants at the time spe­cial­ized in meat, fish and chicken, and she had a veg­e­tar­ian restau­rant. Someone had told me about her place, so I went and tried it.

“One day I was there for lunch, and all of a sud­den I had these horns and whis­tles and every­thing going off. I thought, ‘Wow! This is the future! This is what I want to do!’ About a year or so later, I sold my restau­rant. We got together and we opened up our first restau­rant in Palm Springs called Native Foods.

“At first, hon­estly, it was a busi­ness idea. In the restau­rant trade it’s always, ‘What’s the lat­est craze? Is it Chinese, Caribbean fusion? What is it that’s dif­fer­ent?’ I thought that if I brought these new food prod­ucts into main­stream America, it could be a great angle.”

But then Ray dis­cov­ered what a dif­fer­ence such a diet would make for him per­son­ally. “I started get­ting into it and becom­ing a veg­e­tar­ian; all of a sud­den every­thing began chang­ing for me,” White recalled. “My con­scious­ness started chang­ing; things started chang­ing phys­i­cally for me as well. I was an asth­matic; I had high cho­les­terol and blood pres­sure, and every­thing just went. Here I am 20 years later and my blood pres­sure is great, my cho­les­terols are around 146, and I don’t have to use an inhaler any­more. Physically and emo­tion­ally it made big changes in my life. I’m half American Indian and my dad is full Indian. His whole side of the fam­ily all died very young, and from cho­les­terol and high blood pres­sure. So I real­ized that I could really make a difference.”

Bigger Business

Native Foods thrived—they even­tu­ally opened five loca­tions. Meanwhile, two retired suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men, T. K. Pillan and Kevin Boylan, were hav­ing some real­iza­tions of their own.

“They were drink­ing cof­fee one day, and both real­ized they wanted to eat healthy,” White related. “Like me, they had high cho­les­terol and blood pres­sure, and there were no good places for them to go to eat. They started talk­ing about that and they said, ‘Hey, let’s get into the busi­ness; let’s see if we can do some­thing.’ So they formed a part­ner­ship, and then they went out look­ing for places to eat.”

One day, Pillan and Boylan dis­cov­ered Native Foods—and the seeds for Veggie Grill were sown. “Lo and behold, they came across Native Foods in Westwood and they loved it,” White con­tin­ued. “They came to me and asked me if I wanted to join them. I took a leap of faith and I said, ‘You know, if we’re going to do some­thing big and make a big impact, we need finan­cial inde­pen­dence. The thing that Tanya and I had was a mom-and-pop, and you just can’t grow being a mom-and-pop busi­ness. You need the con­tacts; you need the finances behind you to make a dif­fer­ence. That is real­ity as it is.’ So I sold my shares to Tanya, and I went on my way. We opened up the Veggie Grill.”

Taste Me

While other fast-food com­pa­nies spend heav­ily on adver­tis­ing, White has found quite another approach to be suc­cess­ful for Veggie Grill. “For us, we can’t adver­tise,” he said. “There’s noth­ing we can do about pro­mot­ing how great plant-based pro­tein is, because peo­ple are not going to get it. So what we do is we give the food away. We go into an area and we have a Veggie Grill day: We go around to all the busi­nesses and offer up to 40 peo­ple free food—‘Just come on in and we’ll take care of your office free.’ Because once they eat it, they get it. It’s worked for us.

Click any image above to enlarge.

“Today, for exam­ple, I’m here at the Torrance [California] store and the man­ager is talk­ing to two high school girls from Palos Verdes High School; one is on the swim team and one is in vol­ley­ball. We’re say­ing, ‘Hey, bring your team down and we’ll treat you to lunch.’ If we get them to come, then they’re going to go home and say, ‘Mom, Dad, I want to go to Veggie Grill.’ I mean, McDonald’s did pretty well on that philosophy—get the kids, and Mom and Dad will follow.”

Up from Here

“At the moment, the state of food con­sump­tion in America is unfor­tu­nately very finan­cial in nature,” White observed. “It’s sad that we can’t deliver really great food at a really rea­son­able price and com­pete with McDonald’s and Taco Bell. And it’s unfor­tu­nate that a lot of peo­ple who live pay­check to pay­check can go to In-N-Out and for 20 bucks they can feed their family—it’s some­thing that they finan­cially have to do. Mom and Dad both work; there’s not much time in a day. So for those fast-food places that com­bine con­ve­nience and price, unfor­tu­nately it works.

“But our type of food is on the rise. Even McDonald’s will even­tu­ally have to start doing some type of plant-based prod­ucts in their stores. They actu­ally opened one in India that was totally veg­e­tar­ian, so I think that will come. When it becomes more main­stream in America, and more peo­ple get into this busi­ness, then the prices will start drop­ping. We can then begin reduc­ing the price point so that more and more peo­ple can afford to do it.

“This is not a fly-by-night thing,” White con­cluded. “My part­ners have visions of open­ing hun­dreds. The biggest con­cen­tra­tion of veg­e­tar­i­ans today is high school kids, which tells me that it is gen­er­a­tional. In my life­time, I want to get to the point where we have Veggie Grill drive-throughs.

“Overall, McDonald’s had a good run and it’s time for them to move over. The times are changing.”

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.veggiegrill.com.