Restaurateur's Vision: All-Vegetarian Fast Food

Tu expects revenue of $7 to $8 dollars per diner per trip, with a menu driven by typical offerings found at Burger King (BKC Quote - Cramer on BKC - Stock Picks) and McDonald's (MCD Quote - Cramer on MCD - Stock Picks). Again, he says, tasty food is the key.

Tu has spent the past two and half years developing the extensive Zen Burger offerings.

From what my colleagues and I sampled at a recent private tasting, he seems not only to have hit the right spot on flavor, but also on texture, a much trickier feat for faux meat.

It was particularly notable in the tenderness of the imitation seafood items -- popcorn shrimp, tuna salad and fish patties -- as well as in the soft, chewy chicken strips.

Still, offering tasty food is only one hurdle in the steeplechase of setting up a successful restaurant chain, especially up against such industry giants.

Tom Cross, a 14-year veteran of the fast-food industry and now a faculty member at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration in Charlottesville, Va., says that the sector of quick-service food outlets is now pretty much saturated, and the costs of finding suitable retail property has skyrocketed, with sites that once cost $50,000 now commanding $1 million or more.

But mostly, Cross is skeptical about the concept of a vegetarian-food-only restaurant.

Tu contends, "It's not that there is no demand, it's that there is no access to quality food."

However, even Tu acknowledges there are some regions more likely to give his restaurants a fair shake. That's why new openings of Zen Palate will be initially restricted to major metropolitan areas, with Zen Burger to be more widely dispersed after the concept gets honed in that most cutthroat of all restaurant markets, New York City.

It will give Tu something to chew on, at least for a while.

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