PLNT Burger's Parent Opens PLNT Café in D.C., Merging Three Brands Under One Roof

A 1,521-square-foot café opening later this year in Washington, D.C.'s Mount Vernon Triangle will put three plant-based concepts under one roof — and, for the first time, publicly connect them as a single brand.

PLNT Café is the newest build from the team behind PLNT Burger, the plant-based fast-casual chain co-founded in 2019 by Just Ice Tea founder Seth Goldman and chef Spike Mendelsohn. The chain runs 12 units along the East Coast, most of them embedded in Whole Foods markets, with one free-standing location in Brookline, Massachusetts. Its menu spans plant-based burgers, hot dogs, crispy chicken, wraps, fries and shakes.

What goes on the café's menu?

The format is a three-daypart, all-day café with what the company calls a "vegetable-forward" menu — designed to widen the audience beyond committed plant-based diners, though everything remains entirely vegan.

PLNT Burger staples like the Cheeseburger and Lil Chik'n Dippers will share the board with dishes built for the café, including a Smashed Cucumber Salad dressed with chili crisp, sesame and tamari. Items from T@ko — the company's delivery-only taco virtual brand, also known through the Knockout Tacos website — will appear in a physical dining room for the first time. One example: the Tropicauli Pastor Taco, crispy breaded cauliflower tossed in al pastor marinade, topped with mango salsa, pickled red onions and cilantro crema.

The café also revives the Chik'n Funguy, a once-popular PLNT Burger sandwich of battered and fried oyster mushroom root with lettuce, pickles and plant-based garden herb mayo.

There's a menu-engineering logic here. T@ko, which runs only through digital channels, already shares many of the same SKUs as the burger concept. The café squeezes more revenue from the same ingredient set across three dayparts.

Why merge the brands now?

CEO Chris Treloar said the company had been weighing a diversification of the PLNT menu — possibly dropping "burger" from the name or rebranding entirely. Then the Mount Vernon Triangle site came along, and it looked like the right place to test something different.

"We've never really tied T@ko and PLNT Burger publicly," Treloar said. "This will be the first opportunity to let people know it's one big brand."

The location choice is deliberate. PLNT Burger once operated three free-standing units; one closed, and a New York location was converted to a ghost kitchen. Treloar said the company had tried free-standing sites in markets where PLNT was less known, and that didn't work. The café returns the brand to its home market, where awareness is strongest.

Does this run against the plant-based tide?

The sector's recent record is bleak. Massachusetts-based Clover Food Lab closed all 11 of its locations earlier this year. Kevin Hart's Hart House shuttered entirely in Los Angeles. Veggie Grill closed roughly 40% of its units and was acquired by Next Level Burger. In March, the upscale chain Planta was approved for liquidation.

Treloar reads the shakeout differently. He puts the plant-based dining market at $8 billion — roughly the size of the entire U.S. pizza delivery business — and argues that figure hasn't moved. He blames the closures on "the Hype Curve," where operators pile into a hot concept, some fail, and the survivors capture the demand.

"We're seeing that now," Treloar said. "Vegan customers aren't going anywhere. It's not like they stopped eating plant based. They're just running out of options."

What does this change for operators watching from the sidelines? A bet that plant-based demand is consolidating rather than collapsing — and that a multi-concept, multi-daypart café in a known home market is a cheaper way to find out than another free-standing burger shop.