Fast food and health food don’t have to be opposites. Of all people, Michael Roberts, former president and chief operating officer of McDonald’s, is on a mission to prove just that. Roberts believes local, sustainable meals can sell just as well as a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
Roberts is the brains behind Lyfe Kitchen, a new American dining experience that serves dairy-less cookies and beef from grass-fed, humanely raised cows. There’s no butter, cream, white sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, additives or trans fats in any of the menu items, which include grilled barramundi and fish tacos, according to a feature on the company published in Wired magazine.
Lyfe Kitchen (Lyfe stands for Love Your Food Everyday) opened less than a year ago in Palo Alto, Calif. But Roberts has big plans for his fledgling eatery. He aims to open hundreds of locations across the nation within five years. Lyfe, he hopes, will become America’s new and improved McDonald’s.
Lyfe isn’t just committed to serving healthy meals — though Roberts hopes to serve brussels sprouts like McDonald’s sells french fries — it’s also committed to eco-conscious culinary practices.
Take this example: The poultry industry typically cools slaughtered chickens in chlorine water baths. But Wired reports that Lyfe’s poultry supplier, Mary’s Chickens, uses chilled air to cool its birds, which runs a lower risk of food contamination and saves gallons of water each day.
“It’s better for food safety,”Jim Campbell of Synergy Restaurant Consultants, the company Roberts has hired to source many of Lyfe’s ingredients, told Wired in an interview. “You’re not mixing all these chickens in a bath of water, where contamination can occur. And you’re saving 30,000 gallons of water a day.”
Main photo credit: Lyfe Kitchen