Amy’s Kitchen opens fast-veggie drive-through in Rohnert Park

Mega-successful in vegetarian prepared meals, Amy’s Kitchen wants to turn the tables on fast food with a drive-through restaurant that opened Monday in Rohnert Park.

Located at 58 Golf Course Dr. W., just off Highway 101, down the block from an In-N-Out Burger restaurant and on the road to Graton Casino, Amy’s Drive Thru offers vegetarian, non-GMO, organic menu items priced under $10. It’s an expansion of the frozen line of Amy’s meals and has been two years in the making.

“People have been asking us to do this for years - to create a place where they can go when they’re too busy to cook, but want something good for themselves or their family,” said Amy’s Kitchen co-founder Rachel Berliner. “We’re not restaurateurs, but we love to cook for people, so we decided to make it happen.”

The menu was created by the chefs at Amy’s Kitchen specifically for the drive-through. Food is cooked from scratch, including pizza, pasta, tortillas, pasta for the mac and cheese, tofu in the Super Salad, vegetarian burgers and buns. Everything has a vegan option and can be made gluten-free via the dedicated gluten-free grill, oven and utensils.

At the heart of the menu is The Amy, at $4.29, a veggie burger the company developed over the course of more than 1,000 recipe taste tests. The burger comes in a single or double with a house-made bun, “secret sauce,” locally brined pickles, and tomatoes. Add fries for $2.49. Chefs tasted more than a dozen potato varieties from different growing regions before they found the winner.

The restaurant’s team also worked with local purveyors to source ingredients that are unique to the restaurant, including coffee from Coast Roast, sour cream from Clover Stornetta Farms and chocolate milk from Organic Valley.

“Our relationships with farmers and our knowledge of how to make delicious food on a large scale has really made this project possible,” said Amy’s co-founder Andy Berliner. “We’ve been able to keep the quality high and the prices reasonable.”

The 4,000-square-foot restaurant has a number of sustainability features. It’s topped with a “living roof” planted with drought-tolerant and native plants. A reclaimed-water system irrigates the roof and landscaping around the structure.

Water runoff is directed into onsite swales, where water percolates to help recharge the aquifer. The building also has a 50-plus-panel solar array.

The old barn that originally stood on the drive-through site was dissembled, and the wood was “upcycled” in the redesign of the Amy’s Kitchen plant in Pocatello, Idaho.

The restaurant interior was designed with over 95 percent repurposed or salvaged wood, and any new wood that was used was Forest Stewardship Council–certified. Tables are made of retired auto brake drums sourced from shops along Highway 101. There is seating for about 140.

The restaurant is open daily 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. There are plans to add breakfast to the menu after the first few months of operation.

The Berliners started Amy’s Kitchen, named for their daughter, with a frozen pot pie in 1987. The Petaluma-based company now employs nearly 1,600 people and sells about 140 vegetarian products, as well as Kosher, gluten-free and other special diet products. In.2012 they reported gross sales of more than $300 million.

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