Enter Zen Burger

Chad Carpenter

It seems that every product on the market these days is “green,” “sustainable,” or “organic.” But behind these claims, a lot of greenwashing is going on. At Reality Sandwich, we think it’s important to give businesses that are trying to make a real difference a platform where they can talk about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. We also encourage the RS community to post comments and questions.

A few years ago I was living a modest but comfortable life as an art director in Connecticut. One day my daily routine was interrupted by a phone call from my friend and mentor James Tu, whom I met at one of the weekend classes he gave on the Tao Te Ching, when I was trying (and largely failing) to find meaning and purpose in my life. He called to ask me to participate in a brainstorming session of ambiguous nature. When pressed for more details he was characteristically evasive. He is someone who prefers answers to come of their own accord rather than provide them directly. I could almost see the mischievous glint in his eye during that very brief phone conversation and I didn’t even bother to ask “why me? Instead, I readily agreed to join knowing that any meeting brought about by James would not be a waste of time. After all, this was the man who had opened my eyes to the wonders of the Tao Te Ching, the I-Ching, Quantum Physics and Carl Jung. He was not a man of small ideas or intentions.

The memories and details of that first meeting (and the subsequent ones) are sketchy at best. We met at a Panera bread in a small strip mall somewhere in New Jersey. The meeting consisted of 5 people, all with the most unlikely of backgrounds. The only unifying factor among us was that we were all vegetarian and we all had an interest in or had studied Tao to some extent. James’ purpose for getting us together soon became apparent during the course of that first meeting. He did not feel satisfied with his six-figure career as a financial analyst on Wall Street and wanted to do something “significant”. But this was not the usual mid-life crisis or 7 year itch kind of thing. We all knew James better than that. Rather, he had foreseen a growing human and environmental crisis looming (yet rapidly approaching) on the horizon and felt an urgent need for action. What that action would be was undetermined but he felt that the answer was in his deep-rooted belief that a vegetarian lifestyle was key to reducing the world’s collective karma and potentially reversing the downward spiral of human and environmental health. At the time I had only an elementary understanding of the karmic benefits of a meatless diet, but when James started drawing interrelations between animal agriculture, global warming, the coming commodities crisis, water shortages, fuel costs, etc… quite frankly I felt that maybe he had gone a little mad. This was before the now highly referenced UN report, Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and the myriad of articles, reports, and essays to subsequently come out on these topics.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that James had already left his high paying job to make his goal of making significant social impact a reality, and that shortly after, he would ask me to do the same.

James’ next surprise-filled phone call was to tell me that he had just purchased a majority share in the vegetarian restaurant chain Zen Palate. He felt this brand had potential for expansion into other markets outside of NY and outside of the restaurant itself. Brainstorming and ideas would still flow on the development of what would eventually come to be called Zen Burger but Zen Palate required a tremendous amount of attention in its own right.

During this call James discussed when I thought I might be able to come down to help. I had absolutely no restaurant experience and therefore felt no urgency or need to come and help. Besides all of this, my wife was in the late stages of pregnancy with our first child. Shortly after my son’s birth however, came the next surprise call. James was asking me once again to come down to join him but this time he would hear no more of my excuses and simply asked me to decide. I asked what I could possibly do to help and he said “why don’t you start as a waiter at Zen Palate and then we’ll see from there.” That was little enticement for me to leave my career as an art director, insurance, friends, family, and the comfort of my existence in Connecticut for the low paying and physically demanding position of a waiter (of which I had no experience) in which there would be no promise of advancement, no insurance, and the much higher rent of New York City. My mind was loaded with excuses for why I couldn’t make this drastic move but ultimately my heart knew what the right thing to do was. I told James I need to discuss things with my wife (who, by the way, was extremely supportive and encouraged me to do what I felt was the “right thing”) and then called him right back and accepted. My new career as a waiter would start 2 weeks later.

Zen Burger, NYC

Convincing my family and friends that I had not gone off the deep end was my first great challenge, but the greatest personal sacrifice for me was having to relinquish care of my son (who was only 2 months old) to my parents for the next two years so that my wife could go back to work to compensate for higher bills and a reduced salary. I was certainly not alone in this either as it seemed that everyone who was (and is) a part of the endeavor had sacrificed many freedoms and securities in order to see this shared vision carried out. There were also many challenges and obstacles to overcome in the next few years (which are too great and many to go into detail about) but the most important thing is that we were able to focus our shared intention and create Zen Burger from that. Now we are presented with new and greater challenges in growing the company from one store to many so that it can affect the greatest amount of change while being mindful that it not become a victim of its own success.

Zen Burger was created because we feel that animal agriculture is not only one of the greatest contributors to global warming but also to the prevalence of human disease, not to mention the billions of animals who are slaughtered every year to satisfy our taste for meat. There are campaigns out there to reduce animals suffering, to get people to eat less meat, to influence laws governing animal agriculture, etc… but how many businesses are out there tackling the problem head on by giving people more choice rather than less choice? We take a (seemingly) gentler yet more effective approach to the problem by allowing people to make the right choices for themselves by providing them with a healthier option rather than taking away their options. Everyone knows that McD’s & BK are not good for themseles or the environment, and yet these giants in the restaurant industry continue to influence people’s dietary habits every day. Why do so many people still go to them? Essentially there are 3 things that drive the fast food industry: Price, Convenience, and Familiarity. We decided that we would take that same “formula” by keeping our prices low (and accessible), convenient (by remaining true to the fast food environment) and familiar (by providing American style “comfort foods” that are meat-free but have taste and look of the “real thing”). We’ve essentially taken out the bad stuff (primarily the hormone, steroid, and antibiotic laden meat) and replaced it with healthy vegetables, grains, and non-GMO soy. Rather than tell people that they need to change their life-style through diet and sacrifice in order to be healthier and combat global warming, we’ve instead done the hard work by creating “ZenMeats” that have the look, feel, texture and flavor of meat without all the negative side effects associated with meat.

Ultimately, a lifestyle change is inevitable and necessary for the long-term survival of our planet and our species but it need not be a difficult transition, and we hope to help by making that transition as smoothly and as timely as possible.

We feel that with Zen Burger everyone wins as consumers get more choice to make the right choice. Our goal is to have thousands of units in the next few years which we feel could drastically reduce the world’s dependency on animal agriculture, reduce animal suffering, reduce global warming, reduce collective karma, reduce the prevalence of disease and increase the overall well-being of this planet and its inhabitants.