Making Fast Food Low Carbon

In October 2021 Darryl Neate launched Mavericks Burger Co. to prove that tasty, craveable food can be kind to our world, the animals who roam on it, and to our bodies.

Mavericks is a 100% plant based quick serve restaurant focused on providing its vegetable and plant curious customers with fast food from a brand they can trust.

Mavericks has helped avoid over 7,480 KG of GHG emissions since opening up and that serves all of us very well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darryl Neate launched Mavericks Burger Co. in October 2021 because he wanted to prove that tasty, craveable food can be kind to our world, the animals who roam on it, and to our bodies.

Conceived with the support of a handful of key advisors and partners, Mavericks is a 100% plant based quick serve restaurant focused on providing its vegetable and plant curious customers with fast food from a brand they can trust.

The goal behind Mavericks was to create burgers that are tasty, sustainable and healthy––with less fat and cholesterol and more fibre, iron and calcium. Neate wanted to offer a reliable, cravable, go-to burger for food lovers that avoided the waste and cruelty of the industrial animal agriculture system.

Serious contemplation of a new entrepreneurial venture began in 2018. Several ideas were kicked around but a plant-based burger chain emerged as the top candidate. A year honing knowledge and networking in the food service industry followed. First you grill the experts. This better understanding of both the market and the issues, including the staggering negative environmental impacts of the industrial animal agriculture system, led to full commitment to the idea. In October 2019 an email went out to close friends and family entitled “Introducing Mavericks”.

Development of the brand, product, physical space, team, and marketing as well as more conversations with key players in the industry followed. Experienced chef and food service industry expert helped to round out the menu and recipes and shared their insight into the fast-food industry.

While COVID introduced significant challenges and paused the effort to launch Mavericks from March 2020 to October 2020, the first Mavericks location 15 Merchant’s Wharf in Toronto was leased in March 2021 and has since sold nine thousand burgers to rave reviews.

Here’s some burger math: a three-ounce beef burger results in approx. 2.8 kg of GHG emissions. Total emissions from Mavericks burgers – if they were beef – are 25,200 kg of emissions, meaning actual emissions from their burgers are 90% less than beef burgers – so 2,520 kg of emissions. This results in Gross Avoided Emissions of 22,680 kg.

The first Mavericks location, 15 Merchant’s Wharf in Toronto, ON.

Mavericks works from the assumption that one in three customers chooses a Mavericks burger over a beef burger. In other words, they weren’t necessarily looking for a plant-based burger and would have eaten a beef burger if Mavericks didn’t exist. Indeed, they estimate between 60-80% of their customers are flexitarians, for now. By changing the hearts and minds––flipping them on the grill you might say–of some customers, proving to the sceptical that plant-based food doesn’t have to be a compromise– they change dining habits for the better, all down the road.

So, by offering a quick meal as scrumptious as it is sustainable, Mavericks is essentially, reducing emissions with every burger they sell and that serves all of us very well.