Roy Choi's fast-food revolution gets funded

Upper left, clockwise: A hamburger using the best ingredients, a bun created just for Loco'l
and their version of chicken nuggets.

THE IDEA of challenging the McDonalds and Burger Kings of the world may sound daunting but the first steps in revolutionizing fast food has been launched.

The dream of celebrity chef's Daniel Patterson and Roy Choi last week reached their goal of $100,000 through the crowd funding platform indigogo. The celebrity chefs and their friends in the foodie world will open their first restaurant serving fast-food standards like hamburgers and chicken nuggets in San Francisco's Tenderloin. A future location in Watts will spread the message of "good" fast food.

Why the Tenderloin and Watts? The people in these low-income neighborhoods often have more than their share of fast food outlets but, as Choi says, that is their main dining out experience. They don't have a choice. Loco'l wants to bring healthy and affordable fast food to those underserved neighborhoods.

Choi and Patterson believe that people will opt for healthier food over the old standbys if they had the opportunity and if it was conveniently located in their neighborhood. Take a look at their R&D session in the video below. The food looks so tempting.

"People love a Big Mac, people love a Quarter Pounder, people love KFC and Church's and Popeye's. People love that. It doesn't help if we're going to just try to say, "Don't eat any of that stuff," they say on their webpage.

"We can sit here and blast all day long about fast food, but the fact is they're winning.

"It would be ignorant and stupid of us to not acknowledge and understand all that. Loco'l is a small bridge; to use the familiar to our advantage to bridge us over to healthier, wholesome ways."

"We want to go toe to toe with fast food chains and offer the community a choice," says Choi.

"Price point, culture, design, hospitality, relevance, and most of all flavor. We will be using all our sciences and knowledge and sixth sense as restaurateurs/chefs to create a concept people love and a menu they crave but keep it all in the pocket, keep it all affordable and delicious and speak directly to what the people want."

The chefs are looking at Oakland and Richmond for future potential sites. After that, the world.

"This is a movement. I see it, I feel it, the proof is there. We’d like it to go global,” Choi told San Francisco's CBS affiliate. “And maybe it’s not just us. Maybe it’s like a collective. Like a hip-hop collective, where it goes global and others take it. And then they morph it and grow it. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I do know that as long as Daniel and I are involved, we’re going to protect and nourish the vision of it and the soul and the culture of it.”

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