S7. E11: Adam Weiss: Vegan 2.0
“Vegan 1.0 Didn't get us where we needed to go. It didn't turn enough of the country on, it didn't turn enough young people on, didn't make it into… the mainstream in the way they wanted it to. …it was kind of pushed to the edge and marginalized and it was weird, the food was good, but not great, and not accessible or kid-friendly.
“… I didn't think that was the way to capture the 97% of the world or the country that doesn't identify as a vegan who would otherwise, maybe try it once in a while, but not really make a change. Where Vegan 2.0 is specifically designed to expand the tent to the 97%..”
– Adam Weiss
Adam Weiss is the CEO and director of Honeybee Burger, a plant-based fast-food restaurant with locations in Southern California, and more coming soon to other parts of the country, including New York City (hooray!).
Honeybee’s mission is to promote the benefits of plant-based food on the environment, the planet, and the animals with the most delicious food and the best plant-based proteins on the market. And, it’s working - they were just named the best vegan burger in Los Angeles by Veg News.
Before entering the plant-based space, Adam had a long career in finance, and I was very curious to know how he went from hedge fund guy to vegan restaurant guy.
Visit Honeybee Burger
Follow Honeybee Burger on Instagram
Transcript:
Adam: [00:00:15] Vegan 1.0 didn't get us where we needed to. It didn't turn enough of the country on. Didn't turn enough young people on. Didn't make it into the common kind of mainstream way they wanted it to. It is still kind of pushed to the edge and marginalized, it was weird and the food was good, but not great and not accessible or kid friendly or vegan. 2.0 is specifically in our minds designed to expand the tent to the 97%.
Elizabeth : [00:00:47] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask. If you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. This conversation is with Adam Weiss. Adam is the CEO and director of Honeybee Burger, a plant based restaurant with locations in Southern California and more coming soon to other parts of the country, including New York City. Adam started out in finance and I was very curious to know how he went from hedge fund guy to vegan restaurant guy. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's awesome. I want to start by going through this trajectory of how you go from a hedge fund guy to a plant based food guy.
Adam: [00:02:00] So growing up in L.A. as I did, we were always pitched movie deals, scripts and restaurants. That's kind of a thing. You never did them because they generally didn't make sense and they were all ego driven. I grew up going to business school and then going to Wall Street, like never having done one and always being disinclined to do that. I started my first hedge fund. We did fairly well. I rolled into something a little bit bigger, actually put that deal together during the week of 9/11, which was weird and crazy. New York base, of course. Then really as I kind of built the business, I was getting the most enjoyment and reward from having hired all of these analysts who would then do so well. They could start families, have kids, and buy houses. I was proud of that. Beyond making money for wealthy investors and institutions, that's what mattered. So I started thinking of impact and trying to do something that would be meaningful. As we got into like 2009, 2010, I had exited my hedge fund and had done fairly well and I was looking for ways to be impactful, not start another hedge fund and make rich people richer, but maybe do something that could help and could leave a mark in a good way. Lo and behold, I got pitched this vegan restaurant concept. At the time, I wasn't really vegan, and it was from people who were real estate experts, my friends Chris and Lisa Bambury. They were very thoughtful and not prone to doing restaurant deals. So they said, Adam, we've known you 20 years, we're going to pitch you a restaurant. I said, Okay. They told me about Cafe Gratitude up in San Francisco. They had become smitten. They were already at the point where they had acquired the rights from the founders. We're really set on opening in LA and then expanding.
Elizabeth : [00:04:10] So before I let you go further about this, for people who don't know and I'm sure a lot of people haven't eaten there and don't know, it's way more than a vegan restaurant, like it's an experience? Well, you just give a little. The first time you went, walk us through it.
Adam: [00:04:25] So Café Gratitude is a thing. It is far more than a restaurant. I went and it was on the mission and a dicey part of it. I went in and suddenly you're transported. Not so much physically, but metaphysically because people there talk, think and act differently, which is strange. It sounds culty and it is. It certainly was, Google it. But from the waiters to the food runners to the customers, they all really embraced this idea of eating and dining and sharing community on a higher level. To give you a concrete example, a waiter infamously would ask you before you ordered the question of the day, and that eventually morphed into, Would you like to hear the question of the day? But generally you would sit down, they'd bring you a menu, and they would say, Welcome to Cafe Gratitude. What makes you happiest in your life? I'll be back in a few minutes. Nobody really understood, the true believers did. But if you are new to that world, you were thinking, what's happening? I thought I was going to get quinoa and kale chips, and instead you were transported into this world where they really, truly believed in enlightenment awareness, thoughtfulness, conscious consumerism, and not in a preachy way, in a soft way, but nevertheless really heartfelt. Everything on the menu are affirmations, which when I say it, it sounds so cheesy. So they have dishes. I am humble, I'm effervescent, I am all inspiring and things like that. When you would order. I have many times one of the dishes called I am humble. When they would read your order back, they would say, you are humble, you are effervescent and so on, and you are liberated. It was really kind of weird.
Elizabeth : [00:06:32] It's weird even you saying that kind of gives me the chills. Like it does something when someone says that.
Adam: [00:06:37] 100%.
Elizabeth : [00:06:39] Right.
Adam: [00:06:39] When you're sitting there, you've never been spoken to like that in a restaurant and it's caught you off guard and you're sitting down, you're ready to eat. So you're open hearted. So you're really open to messaging. Now with that translation outside San Francisco, I wasn't sure the food was great. They were crowded. I spoke to the customers wearing my due diligence hat and I would ask them, what do you like about gratitude? Why are you here? Why do you come back here? you would get answers literally that had nothing to do with food. Go figure. That's when I realized these guys are on to something. Because not only did it give you a sense that they were building this tribe and community of loyal customers, which is key in the business, but also it gave the restaurant the permission to do things that other restaurants couldn't. Whether from asking that question or having a charity neighborhood bowl where the proceeds would go to, to a local charity, or having you buy or wear a shirt that might say, I am grateful, like these things. They really leaned into it from a point of sincerity, the founders did. So, my friends, who who made the deal for the rights we're going to embrace all that and oh, by the way, understood real estate which as you know in the restaurant business, if you get the real estate deal wrong, nothing else works, no matter how great the food is. And that goes beyond location, location, location, obviously. So they called me on that fateful day and they said, okay, here's the deal. It's Cafe Gratitude. We own the building. It's going to be great. It's a great deal and we think it's a really important place. I went, I loved it. I did as much as I could, which wasn't much. So we did that first deal on Larchmont and the economics on it were extraordinary. Not only did we all do well, but it felt really good. You are proud of it. Now, to be fair, a lot of people went and said, this is weird. They started calling it cafe attitude but not in a mean way, but in a way that implied that if you didn't embrace their messaging, you didn't belong. It wasn't that way. But it was a little warm and fuzzy.
Elizabeth : [00:08:53] The first time I went, it threw me, it definitely threw you. Then you just give in to it because you're like, the food's really good, and then you appreciate it, but it does take some steps.
Adam: [00:09:04] Well said. It takes some steps. Certainly if you go in having heard about it. Right. But nevertheless, the food was good. The margin is great for the operator. We the founders grew the business. I participated to the extent that I could in the stores that they opened. They were all individually financed. We just kept doing better and better and the founders were doing well. I think they were protective of the brand. But ultimately, I'm a finance guy and the numbers were great. I do still think there's a great future. They've survived the pandemic. It took some pivoting. It's a very, very labor intensive business as restaurants go, because it just is. A kind of Honeybee was born of that whole notion. But that's what brought me that arc from like a hedge fund guy to to restaurant investing.
Elizabeth : [00:09:54] Now you're in this plant based world, right? So what happens?
Adam: [00:09:58] Well, we had done a handful of gratitudes. I had been out of the hedge fund world for a while. I think ultimately with their messaging of gratitude, they were always going to be not a niche, but a vegan 1.0 kind of business. I didn't see the future where we are today or growing that much. I thought I really feel strongly about the idea of this mission of sustainability and future generations inheriting our planet. Certainly in 2015, 16, 17, the world was changing. We started focusing more on climate impact sustainability, but it wasn't a driver yet, but it was certainly a bigger deal in my world. My child is now five years old and she came home from her preschool one day and said to daddy, Why do we have plastic straws at Cafe Gratitude? as I recall at the time they were and I said, Why would that matter? She said, Well, they all end up in the Pacific Ocean and it's really bad. My point is that's not whether that's true or not or urban myth or whatever. The point that my five year old was hearing it and the fact that she has a reasonable concern that it will be her planet one day. Why are we doing this? Got me thinking about the bigger picture. So not that it was the plastic straws, per se, it was that this next generation is going to be going to school, way more aware of the environmental impact of their decisions and what we have done than any generation before. That's kind of what rang the bell for me to start thinking maybe we ought to lean into this and embrace it, not just because it's good and important, but because it's untapped and commercial.
Elizabeth : [00:11:54] It's really interesting because I didn't even think about it before that. You've been in this. I mean, Cafe Gratitude is awesome, but it is kind of old school vegan like you're saying, I also love how you say vegan 1.0 and 2.0. I want to talk about that more. You didn't come in this once the world had exploded with all these plant based alternatives and beyond burgers, impossible burgers and everything else that just keeps appearing on the market. You really came in when it wasn't that similar to the seventies. Right?
Adam: [00:12:26] It hadn't evolved. But, to get to your point, I finally decided that after my daughter had that conversation with me that maybe the investment I had made into the gratitude business was really a good thing and something to be proud of. So I put it on my LinkedIn profile, which I historically curated to be pure finance always, and that's what I built my brand around. I hate to say that it sounds horrible, but I said, You know what, I'm going to throw it on there. Then months later, I got contacted by two Dutch entrepreneurs who had noticed that I did this plant based investing and said, We have this really cool idea for you and we can get into that if you like. But that's really what launched the next phase of my plant based food and agtech investing.
Elizabeth : [00:13:21] What year was this when this happened with the Dutch guys?
Adam: [00:13:24] 2017. So we met at a location of a small business that I owned and they had this bag, look from the outside, it was a drug deal, like a drug deal and may have been a drug deal. We were in a seedy part of town and it was this Ziploc bag, a gallon sized bag, and it was kind of dusty inside and it was filled with these greenish colored chips from a distance. It looked like a bag of weed. Right. I said, okay, what do we have? They said, You have the most revolutionary chips in the world in your hand right now. I tried them and they were great. They were fine. They basically said, these are made from a plant based protein called duckweed or lambda, and they're going to be great and maybe gratitude will be interested and if gratitude is, maybe you can help us bring these to market as a new CPG (consumer packaged food brand). I had underwritten a fair number of CPG brands and they're very, very tricky and very hard to project and predict. The chips were okay, they weren't great. But I love these entrepreneurs. I loved where they were coming from, but I was thrilled with the idea that it was made with an ingredient I'd never heard of. I'd been around a little bit, certainly around the vegan world. So every kind of protein from hemp and nut and seaweed and all the rest, and this was new. So my follow up with them, I said, Guys, I'd like to come down and see how you guys make it. So they said, sure. I went down to their farm, which is in Southern California, about an hour and a half, 2 hours south of LA, in the foothills above Carlsbad in an area called San Marcos, which is known for greenhouses and growing hops for beer and so on and other things. I went on to this farm. The farm was a prior farm for algae. So a company that was trying to turn algae into protein had converted the infrastructure and had all these big aquatic pools outside, and these guys had converted it to growing Lemna, these tiny little plants, which I can tell you about, but I was blown away. My last thought was, this is a chip farm. Like, this is not where you make corn chips. There is something really cool happening here. So I sat down with the guys and I said, okay, I've got interesting chips now, CPG, no, you guys are crazy, but there's something here and what's here is way bigger and way more impactful and way more, way more potential. So we talked about it and they were very, very smart. We ultimately came to the conclusion that the company perhaps could be rebranded and re founded as a agtech or a food tech company, making not just the plant based protein for others to use in their manufacture, but the technology, infrastructure, systems and the IP that could be then licensed and used by sovereign nations to create protein solutions in countries in areas where there's no arable land and very little water. That's what got us excited. What was so insane was I did my diligence. There was one other company doing it that hadn't really gone anywhere. They were in Florida. What occurred to me was if these guys were telling the truth and it took a minute to figure it out, that they were on to something. But far more to the point, and this is where I think it becomes relevant, is at that time there were two new companies blowing up in the plant based world. One was impossible foods and one was beyond meat or beyond. They were creating these new meat analogs made with plant based protein one, one of which was wheat at the time, and the other one was pea protein. I sensed the opportunity there that they were going to be the first of many companies and that they were going to blow up with success and their demand for plant based protein would skyrocket. That's the market I wanted to live in. I wanted to be in the way so that when they came looking for a cheap, readily available, easily digestible plant based protein plant, Whole Foods with their duckweed and their technology would be there. That's what motivated the deal and the timing of it back then.
Elizabeth : [00:17:49] What's really crazy is also maybe because of the pandemic and everyone's sense of time is totally gone. But the fact that this is like 2017, 18 and it feels like Beyond and Impossible have been around for a decade, right? What happened to Implantable?
Adam: [00:18:04] Well so Implantable has rocketed and they're grinding away, pun intended, down in their farm and I think are going to be on the way to making amazing breakthroughs and making those proteins available to companies like Beyond and Impossible and many others, and also potentially making deals with foreign countries to transport and build these structures elsewhere so they can create local plant based farms and sources for protein that didn't exist. They're on their way.
Elizabeth : [00:18:31] That's awesome. It's awesome. So this is vegan 2.0 when you talk about vegan 1.0 versus 2.0 because it's I mean, it's really true. But I've never heard anyone put it that way.
Adam: [00:18:42] Well, don't want to be contentious because vegan 1.0 it's the OG, right? They started the movement and they've embraced it. But vegan 1.0 didn't get us where we needed to. It didn't turn enough of the country on, didn't turn enough young people on, didn't make it into like the common kind of mainstream in the way they wanted it to. Still was kind of pushed to the edge and marginalized. It was weird and the food was good, but not great and not accessible or kid friendly. So vegan 1.0, was incredibly valuable and important in history. But I didn't think that was the way to capture the 97% of the world or the country that doesn't identify as vegan, who would otherwise maybe try it once in a while, but not really make a change. Vegan 2.0 is specifically in our minds designed to expand the tent to the 97%. The 3% are great.
Elizabeth : [00:19:32] But you don't need to sell them.
Adam: [00:19:33] To be fair, a lot of vegan 1.0 places are really great. But ultimately we are shamelessly leaning into commercialism and modern trends and all that from Instagram friendly food. Of course, that's important to creating dishes out of ingredients that a vegan 1.0 would not like, but perhaps are nevertheless superior to a meat based analog. We can talk about those new ingredients. But yeah, vegan 2.0 is where we see the world growing.
Elizabeth : [00:20:04] Well, as someone who probably is more vegan, 1.0 in the sense that I've been vegan for a long time for animals, first and foremost. But I also have the realization and the knowledge that the world's not going to go vegan anytime soon and you're certainly not going to make anyone vegan by screaming about the injustices. But you are going to encourage a whole lot of people to eat plant based and vegan with positive messaging and good food. That's going to save a whole lot more animals than kicking and screaming about it.
Adam: [00:20:43] Oh, 1,000%. We say that vegan 1.0, they preach in 2.0. We teach. It's not judgmental. My mom always taught me that whenever somebody says I'm not being judgmental, they're about to be judgmental. But yes, the messaging has to be positive and constructive and what you can do in a good, proactive way. Then shame on you. What are you doing? You know, don't. For example, outside our stores, we have a poster. It basically says, dear humans, I don't mind you standing on me being the planet, but if you don't mind, if you can swap out a cheeseburger for one made of plants, here's what you're going to do. You're going to reduce your CO2 footprint. You're going to save water and oh, by the way, you're going to save a couple of cows. I think that makes people not just happy, but they go, wow, I can literally move the needle on the planet in the future and the environment. One meal, that's it. If you can make somebody feel good about eating cheeseburger, fries and a shake, you've won. It turns out it resonates. This generation in particular are really motivated by mission based businesses that are embracing positive messaging. So that's what Honeybee is and that's what we built the brand around.
Elizabeth : [00:22:00] They're open, right? They know who they are and what they want in a way that no other generations have not in the past. So in that way, I see it with lots of kids they just may not ever be vegan in their lives, but they have no issues like eating at any plant-based restaurant on the planet. It's not that you don't have to convince them.
Adam: [00:22:21] We think they're going to grow up saying, why do we count us again? Why do we dedicate 90% of the arable farmland to growing stock and food for burgers and steaks like? Why is that? They're aware of it in a way that I think obviously we weren't aware of. I do believe that unless we solve some issues regarding air and water and land, like we're going to be forced into doing this. We might as well have this next generation of consumers aware of it and positively inclined. That's part of our tiny little mission.
Elizabeth : [00:22:52] They're smart. They're really smart. They just get it. So I think it's awesome. So how do we get to Honey Bee? How does that happen?
Adam: [00:23:01] My thought was, well, there's these new companies beyond and impossible that we're innovating in ways that we'd never seen before, creating patties that were beef, like in almost every way that may turn off a vegan 1.0 person. It's too meaty. I don't eat food that bleeds to get people who do eat burgers, that's the number one fast food in our country to go, wow, this is as good. Maybe It's better for me. It's better for the planet. I'm down. I thought, there's something here, but there were precious few places to try it. So back in 2018, if you poked around looking for beyond or impossible, it was very hard to find restaurants that had maybe ten patties for the day or it was only in Crossroads or Momofuku, right? So it's really hard to get and I wanted to build a brand that would lean into these brand new products, make it accessible everywhere in a platform that was easy, not preachy, not expensive and super approachable. So that's how Honeybee was born in late 2018.
Elizabeth : [00:24:01] Okay. So you started with one, right? Honeybee. Where was that?
Adam: [00:24:05] So the first one was a tiny little space in Vermont in a neighborhood called Westfield. It's kind of a hipster neighborhood.
Elizabeth : [00:24:13] I used to live there.
Adam: [00:24:14] Yeah. I mean, I have profound respect for you. Yeah, it's a cool pocket. Very small. Our store was maybe 12 feet across. It was tucked under the Westfield Movie Theater marquee. So you could barely see us, the selling floor was maybe 300 feet small, cramped. So we launched that in May of 2019. We started innovating with things from that tiny little store and really hit our stride. In Q4 of 2019 and coming into Veganuary 2020, we were killing it, doing our average order size was huge, our volumes are up, our profits. It was all good. We were actually up in the Bay Area and President's weekend of February of 2020. We were scouting locations and doing other things and then we got this weird note that there's this virus and what's going on. To make a long story short, by the end of that week, the world changed, right? So we went into the pandemic with our best business and profits ever. Then the next chapter starts.
Elizabeth : [00:25:21] Wow. Well, I mean, I know that happened to so many people, but it's so heartbreaking.
Adam: [00:25:25] Oh, yeah.
Elizabeth : [00:25:27] You're just getting off the ground and you're just blowing up and now shutting your doors, right?
Adam: [00:25:32] Well, no. So, Beth, so we thrived. So forgive me.
Elizabeth : [00:25:37] Wait, wait, rewind.
Adam: [00:25:40] Oh, on the contrary. Sales and profits went up. March, April, May, June, July. We. We killed it during the pandemic. We always had small diamonds. So when they closed that, it wasn't the end of the world for us. We had a really sweet walkup outdoor window that was already set up, which did big business and then the delivery platforms. So returns kept us going. Then we signed a lease in Manhattan as in New York City now.
Elizabeth : [00:26:07] Very exciting.
Adam: [00:26:08] Very exciting. So that one will open, I think in the spring of 2022. Then we're going to announce a really cool joint venture in the Chicago area. But my whole thesis is to become the incumbent, so become the vegan burger brand. If we can do that, we win. If we do that, landlords call airports, call sports arenas, international calls. Like that's when you really develop a presence, Then that's when all of a sudden everybody wants a Honeybee in their project or in their mall or in their new food court.
Elizabeth : [00:26:44] I get excited every time any new plant based place opens. It just brings new people in. It brings people who've never tried it before. I want to talk about your menu, though. I think, tell me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard of a place before until you that has both Beyond and Impossible burgers. That's pretty cool.
Adam: [00:27:07] Certainly you usually have to choose and the reason for that is, generally speaking, now you can get distributors to carry both. In the beginning you had to find people that carried them. Now, it's easy, but the way the business works with branded products is impossible. I would love it if we were exclusive. We'd probably get more social love, more advantageous pricing and those things and beyond look like the same thing. But when you dance with both partners, you don't get the full commitment from either one. I'm fine with that because I thought it was really important to the customer to have two choices, not least of which is because one was wheat and one wasn't. Now, Impossible is made out of soy, we do have a lot of customers who don't want soy, so they order Beyond it and this creates some logistical issues. But yeah, it was a commitment we made early on and it turns out we're one of the few that do it.
Elizabeth : [00:28:02] What else is on the menu?
Adam: [00:28:04] Our first test is obviously to be vegan, but is it fun on a bun that's done right? Yeah, but that rules out kale salads and certain other items that might be vegan but don't fit. So we have made Honeybee become a platform for consumer discovery of the best 2.0 vegan products on the market. What I mean by that is many people who dine with us have never had any of these products before. We've embraced a lot of category firsts and have been exclusive or launch partners to a number of brands. The biggest one was a product called Atlas Monroe. It's Vegan Fried Chicken, launched by a female entrepreneur up in the Bay Area in Northern California who has this killer product. She was on Shark Tank in 2019 and her product was this really delicious, very specifically flavored fried chicken. She had a huge following online. We carried it sight unseen, and it put us on the map with not only new communities and customers, but also for launching products that nobody else had. We were the first. So that opened my eyes to use this experience to get customers excited to come back. So let's bring new stuff and say we are unabashed about being test rabbits and telling our customers, you guys are going to be the first ones to try.
Elizabeth : [00:29:31] Do things come and go on your menu or does your menu just keep expanding?
Adam: [00:29:35] So we've never launched a product per se that we've taken off. We have expanded with discipline. What we're going through right now is a product from Green Monday or Omni called Omni Pork. I don't know if you know it. It's a spam equivalent. Yeah. Spam is a weird thing, but people who love spam love spam. But to us, it's a new form factor. We tested it and it's really good. There's crossover demand for that product in certain demographics.
Elizabeth : [00:30:08] What's the actual product you're selling, like the spam?
Adam: [00:30:12] So it does look like spam, which is another kind of pork sausage, but it's on our Instagram right now. We just did a test. I guess in Jersey, they have a thing called a pork roll or pork egg and cheese, which it's a huge thing in South Jersey. I also know that spam is really, really big and a lot of Asian cuisine. Certainly in L.A., a lot of the ramen places, especially the vegan ones, carry it. We found a way to make it fun on a bun and we tested it to do one thing that our burgers Filet-O-Fish don't. It creates a crunchy texture when we grill it, which is really satisfying and different when it's in the completed product. So we love it. We're just working on the final logistics of it.
Elizabeth : [00:31:00] It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool that you try all these things too, and that and it's all like things that people can buy in their home and have it home too. It's like an entry way to plant based foods for a lot of people.
Adam: [00:31:13] That's our point. So Beth, what we do get deals from these companies like nowadays, for example, the chicken nugget people where we get a QR code and a discount code to the consumer, if you like this, you can buy it in grocery. Here's the deal: the discount through Honeybee.
Elizabeth : [00:31:26] So you're kind of like a tasting kitchen for a lot of people, who would not normally try this stuff, right? Which is awesome.
Adam: [00:31:34] Yes.
Elizabeth : [00:31:34] People will say, well, it's not all that healthy. Do you get that from people or?
Adam: [00:31:42] Well, of course, yeah. Our customers are enlightened. That's a nice way. They're very enlightened and very aware, generally speaking. What we say is it's a common thing that it is true that Beyond and Impossible are made in a factory. If you only knew what commercial beef went through, you would not even compare the two. But nevertheless, people envision, I suppose, cow beef for burgers, maybe coming off a pasture in some high alpine lake and field and beauty. Then it comes in and they wave a wand over and it becomes the double cheeseburger. That's not what happens. It doesn't happen with anything you're eating in fast food so the Beyond and Impossible thing being manufactured I'm okay with it's un debatable that it's better for the environment just I can show you the amount of water that goes into one cheeseburger versus Beyond Burger, whether or not it's better for your body. Well, it depends. There's high calorie and sodium and everything, but still. But what's inarguable is that it's better for the cow.
Elizabeth : [00:32:45] Yeah.
Adam: [00:32:46] Right. So 100% of cows approve of Beyond Burger over a traditional burger made of them. So what we say is, look, you can do it for you. You can do it for the planet. You can do it for the animals. But these are all reasons you can think about it having a positive impact. I can tell you a million reasons why you shouldn't eat commercial beef burgers. But if we're having that conversation, I think it's a positive thing. But we get pushback all the time.
Elizabeth : [00:33:13] Well, and I think to most people that come for a burger at your place. What if they weren't having a burger there? They'd probably be having an animal burger somewhere else. So it's not like they're on a health kick and they're missing out on something like a kale salad somewhere else.
Adam: [00:33:30] We agree. I mean, obviously, if you're getting burger fries in the shape, you're not thinking about your health or your diet.
Elizabeth : [00:33:35] That's what I mean. Yeah.
Adam: [00:33:37] When people come in and they're going to get a cheeseburger, fries and a shake, which is our most common order, it's not so much that they don't care about their health, but they know, okay, I'm about to indulge here. We just give them a tiny bit of good feeling, like you're indulging, you're going to pass on some calories, but no animals will die. You're making an impact on the future, and ultimately it's probably better for the environment than if you didn't do it. So thank you for being here. That resonates with consumers today, unlike, I think, any time in history.
Elizabeth : [00:34:10] As a vegan and someone who loves when other people eat plant based or start getting turned on to it, it's a gateway, you're not going to turn people on as easily with tofu as you are with a burger. It's a great way for people to start experimenting and exploring.
Adam: [00:34:26] If you get it wrong, you will turn people off like a bad tofu thing. But if you get it right, you open peoples eyes and that's what we're doing.
Elizabeth : [00:34:33] That's awesome. It's good on so many levels. I love that you are expanding all over the place, especially. New York City. Adam, thank you so much.
Adam: [00:34:44] My pleasure, Beth, I enjoyed it.
Elizabeth : [00:34:53] To learn more about Adam, to learn about Honeybee Burger, go to our website SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything. We're on Facebook and Instagram, @Speciesunite. If you have a spare moment and could do us a favor, please subscribe rate review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you'd like to support Species Unite, we would greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, SpeciesUnite.com and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santina Polky, Bethany Jones and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.
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