Former homeless co-founder of this plant-based alternative to McDonald’s has never heard of golden arches

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Mr. Charlie’s “Frowny Meal” comes in cartoon red and ka-POW! Yellow box, just like the more famous brand of one fast food giant. However, the company’s Los Angeles restaurant in San Francisco’s Union Square has no roast beef, pink slime, or dairy because Mr. Charlie’s is not a clone of McDonald’s, but a plant-based alternative to it.

Inside, it feels more modern than even that hipster Mickey D on 24th and Mission Streets, with club music at high volume and two-seat pods where people wait for their order. There are forgeries of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe reproductions, as well as riffs on cans of his Campbell’s soup (in Fun, Community, and Daring, as well as Misfits and Farts). A cow stands next to a sign that says “Stop staring at me like I’m a piece of meat.”

By serving “Not a hamburger” and “Not a chicken sandwich”, the whole project looks like a tongue-in-cheek scheme of Adbusters, the anti-consumer Canadian magazine that inspired the Occupy movement. This certainly calls for a cease and desist from Ronald McDonald’s highly controversial legal department. But this is not a gamble. While his prices may be a bit higher than the well-known affordable Happy Meal, Mr. Charlie wears his animal-loving heart on his saving the world sleeve.

Frowny Meal — a vegan burger with pickles, onions, ketchup, mustard and optional vegan cheese, plus four soy nuggets and a drink — is not meant to make you feel sad. It should evoke one of the joys of the typical American childhood by reminding us that sometimes everyone has a reason to frown.

Eight years ago, Mr. Charlie’s co-founder and brand director Taylor McKinnon was homeless and lived in Los Angeles. He had a traumatic childhood in London filled with bullying, abuse and family financial problems, and while he didn’t fight addiction, he hit rock bottom.

“I had nowhere to go,” McKinnon told The Standard. “I was so scared and really wanted to kill myself – my mind was crazy.”

He contacted the Dream Center, an organization affiliated with the Pentecostal Church that works with people in recovery, survivors of domestic violence, and others in crisis. After working in the food preparation industry, a friend gave him $1,000 with a note: “Favorite gift.”

“I will never forget this,” McKinnon said. “He said, ‘It’s your time to get back on your feet and make something of yourself.’ I was overwhelmed with love, and I no longer wanted to kill myself.”

Around the same time, he met his future wife, which led to a chance meeting with Mr. Charlie’s future co-founder Aaron Haxton, and later with the third party of this triangle, Charlie Kim. Kim runs Aria, a hip-hop-influenced Korean fried chicken chain that started as a hole in the wall on Larkin Street in Tenderloin. Agreeing that they couldn’t pinpoint it, but they had a good feeling about it, they decided to join the plant-based revolution with the first Mr. Charlie on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles.

The intuitiveness of this chain of events lends plausibility to McKinnon’s commitment to the spiritual spirit of capitalism, in which anything is possible with an open heart and some perseverance. Mr. Charlie is named partly after Chef Kim and also after the song of the same name.

“I’m a huge Grateful Dead fan and I heard Bob Weir say the words from ‘Mr. Charlie,” McKinnon said of what went through his mind when he met Kim. “He said, ‘Hey, let’s be partners.’ I Facetimed Aaron and Aaron said, “Go with the flow.” I showed him Charlie and we shook hands.”

“Mr. Charlie told me so,” is the refrain in the Dead song, but it was McKinnon who told Kim that there would be no chicken in their restaurant – in fact, no meat products at all. Still developing a business plan, McKinnon visited the Dream Center and met a previously homeless woman named Susana Sanchez who had two children.

“She was incredible,” McKinnon said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we go deeper together and launch this concept? Let’s make sure that everyone who works for Mr. Charlie comes from dysfunctional families and loves them so they can be a blessing to other people.”

Sanchez became a hiring manager, partnering with Dream Center in Los Angeles and the ambitious but somewhat controversial nonprofit Urban Alchemy in San Francisco. This is where Mr. Charlie starts to feel less like a thumb in McDonald’s eye and more like a kiss on the boo boo. McKinnon is the embodiment of the blessed Angeleno, but his desire to help others by healing Mother Nature is sincere.

@lizzo

#stitch with @plantbasedparadise better not elk neck meat

♬ original sound – lizzo

In March 2022, Lizzo posted on TikTok how she enjoys the Frowny Meal, and everything exploded from there.

Mr. Charlie isn’t trying to reinvent the fast food wheel, but McKinnon says there is a therapist for 20 or so employees if the pace of their work starts to affect them. At some point, they ran out of stock and had to take Interstate 5 to keep the doors open.

“We had to make an emergency delivery,” McKinnon said. “San Francisco ate all our food!”

Business seems bustling: When The Standard visited the Union Square venue in late January, the dining hype really took off. Looking into McDonald’s across Sutter Street, we saw a much quieter restaurant. No employee has yet eaten a Frowny Meal, at least according to one cashier.

Mr. Charlie plans to expand by exporting Frowny Meals first to New York and then to Australia. Despite the company’s monstrous-sounding “Billions and Billions Served” slogan, McKinnon claims he’s never heard of McDonald’s. It was Haxton who created Mr. Charlie’s appearance, he added, focusing entirely on making him tireless and familiar, like in a circus.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said when asked if he feared prosecution. “Our logo is inspired by something very personal: sometimes you can be sad.”

Mr Charlie told you about it.

Mr. Charlie

428 Sutter Street, San Francisco
mrcharlies.com

English