Some members of New York’s food world, social media wing, and environmental/corporate responsibility advocates are atwitter about a new burger joint hitting Midtown, near Bryant Park. Called 4food (not sure how we feel about that name) the restaurant is like a poppy mash-up of so many initiatives the social impact team cheers.
The 4food logo
The food will be organic and local whenever possible, and the environmentally sound construction houses a giant composter to consume all that’s thrown away. The restaurant will rely on web technology for menus, ordering (which you can do via iPads in the store), and more, to reduce waste and provide more information to customers making decisions about their health. Employees are being hired through NYC’s Displaced Worker program.
The company is using social media (and has been since last year) to engage its future customers in generating ideas on how to “de-junk” NYC. (The big idea is to impact the healthfulness of the fast food genre.) Naturally, the store is outfitted with a jumbotron streaming real-time, relevant Twitter and Foursquare updates. 4food wants social media savvy customers who will spread the word about the spot—so they won’t need a huge advertising budget. In fact, you’ll be able to customize your own burger online, market it, and earn $0.25 every time someone else orders it.
And if all of that doesn’t make you want to tell someone about 4food, maybe the actual food will: the burgers are donut-shaped, and available in beef, lamb, turkey, veg, pork, salmon, and egg versions. You then choose a vegetable to fill the whole (the point being to make the burger healthier) as well as its bun and other toppings. Furthermore, it’s a self-identified fast food restaurant where nothing is fried.
We social impact enthusiasts like to talk about the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Some reporting on 4food say that the restaurant hasn’t exactly finalized the plan for the last of those three. A three-story, 150-seat restaurant using top technology and paying Manhattan rent probably can’t solve the profitability conundrum solely by using social media in lieu of an advertising budget. That doesn’t mean they aren’t going at it aggressively: word has it that the restaurant will open a store a month for the first few months, and eventually over ten will exist in Manhattan.
Lest you worry there aren’t capable people behind this incredibly ambition operation, take a look at the list of founding partners (from the 4food website):
“Partners in 4food include the founders Adam Kidron and Michael Shuman; Bill Niman the founder of Niman Ranch, the largest purveyor of natural meats in the US with revenues of over $100 million; Dr. Woodson Merrill, founder of the Beth Israel Center for Integrated Medicine and a leading authority on wellness and nutrition; and Ed Winter, Chairman of Omnicom’s “Brand Activation” Agency, Tracy Locke, and one of the foremost experts on marketing to young people in the US.”
Opening day is September 7, 2010, and Kidron is predicting they’ll see 400 customers. We think the Channelise team will be among them!