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In an industrial pocket of North Portland, Oregon just a few minutes off I-5, there’s an old McDonald’s that was given a surprising second life. The familiar architecture is now home to Face Plant, a vegan burger joint that opened earlier this year and aims to “become the best fast food worldwide,” according to founder Matt Plitch. It’s a lofty goalbut it’s driven by an even bigger one. “Fast food is [a huge source] of meat consumption outside the home,” he says. “And so the aim is to change the trajectory of global warming for 8 billion people.” Face Plant was nearly four years in the makingfrom developing a business plan and bringing in investors, to finding the right location, to developing an alt-meat blend that “tastes better than a Big Mac.” On that last front, Plitch had some serious help: The food influencer and cookbook author Molly Baz did all of the restaurant’s recipe development. And this labor seems to be paying off: In the first few months, Plitch says they’ve served “tens and tens of thousands of customers,” far exceeding expectations, with the average ticket running 50% higher than they anticipated and more than double that of McDonald’s. [Photo: Face Plant] Plant-based products are part of a growing industry, one that was valued at $8.1 billion in 2024, more than double that of 2017. Still, there have been strong headwindsboth Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have seen sales decline as they struggle to identify a broader customer base beyond just vegans and vegetarians. But Plitch says his target customer actually isn’t vegan at all. ”We built this to serve people who love fast food and eat a ton of meat,” he says. “And while we’ll be so grateful for vegans and vegetarians who are interested and want to support us, the entire model is around stealing the McDonald’s customer.” [Image: Face Plant] For starters, that means not broadcasting Face Plant’s sustainability bona fides. The color scheme is a bright red (no greens or browns in sight); the logo is an outline of two hands holding a burger; the font is chunky and casualit all feels inviting and familiar, not like it’s trying to coerce people into changing their eating habits to save the planet. Which, Plitch says, is exactly the point. This is a particularly resonant goal, especially given where Face Plant is located. At the base of a peninsula called Swan Island, the area is home to a number of warehouses, port workers, UPS and FedEx facilities, a Coast Guard station, and the Daimler Truck North America headquarters. “It’s a little bit of a different flavor than your typical Portland neighborhood,” he says. (It’s also part of the Portland Harbor Superfund site, which brings an added poignance to Plitch’s environmental hopes for his restaurant.) What’s on tap Face Plant’s menu is intentionally small and includes a burger (with four different variations, depending on how loaded you want it), nuggets, french fries, and milkshakes. “We want to do a few things exceptionally well,” Plitch says, adding that they are adding a plant-based chicken sandwich to the menu this fall. The buns are from the same bakery as In-N-Out Burger, while the base of the burger is Impossible meat. Still, it took three years to get the taste where he wanted it to be. And that’s where Baz came in. When Plitch was growing up, Baz’s now-husband, Ben Willett, was one of his closest friends, so after he came up with the idea for Face Plant, she was his firstand onlyculinary call. He says in addition to Baz being “one of the best recipe developers in the world,” it was also significant that she was an omnivore. “It was so important to us that Molly came into the test kitchen every day and asked herself, ‘Is this as good as the Double-Double Animal Style I had at In-N-Out yesterday?'” “Molly’s superpower is craveability. She makes things that stay with you after you’ve had them,” he says. On this front, he had some serious help: Food influencer and cookbook author Baz did all the recipe development for Face Plant, turning Impossible’s standard mix into “something entirely unique through new food science,” he says. Her team also developed the vegan milkshakes, which are made using pea protein. Plitch says while coffee, chocolate, and strawberry took “a matter of days,” vanilla took a year to develop. “You can’t mask the coconut, oat, or soy.” Plitch says Baz continues to be involved in Face Plant, not just with developing new items like the forthcoming plant-based chicken sandwich but in strategic planning as they look at expanding the business. Baz, who’s also a shareholder in the company, isn’t the only high-profile partner. Face Plant raised about $4 million in venture funding, including from former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario’s ReGen Ventures. (AgFunder, Bread & Butter Ventures, and Ceas are also backers.) [Images: Face Plat] Why fast food? Vegan restaurants have been gaining popularityand cloutin recent years, perhaps most notably when Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park transitioned to a plant-based menu in 2021. Still, fast-food forays into meat alternatives haven’t been a resounding success. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King all introduced plant-based burgers over the last five years, but only Burger King’s Impossible Whopper is still around in any meaningful wayand even then, customers online have complained that they’re not widely available. But Plitch isn’t turned off by these trends. “I really, truly feel like food service and fast food is the greatest platform for hospitality in the world.” Before Face Plant, he launched a carbon-neutral food brand, but he couldn’t shake the distance between what he was creating and the consumer. “You don’t own the relationship with the customer; you don’t get to control your price. You’re sort of effectively in the voice of Whole Foods or Fred Meyer,” he says. “One of the things I really yearned for was being front and center in terms of the relationship with the customer.” That relationship is a priority for Face Plant. With more than 45 employees, Plitch says they spend about eight times more hours training them than the competition does. At $17 an hour, the pay is also higher than many fast food joints (Portland’s minimum wage is $16.30). A key part of orientation is watching the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor together. “It’s the greatest two-hour summary of everything we have to do as a company,” he says. “The burgers, the shake, the fries, these are our little Trojan horses covered in special sauce to do our real job, which is what I think he was setting out to do, of showing people they deserve love.” And, in a marked difference to the vast majority of his fast food competitors, Plitch is pushing back against automated technology instead of embracing it. “[Their] belief, as far as I can tell, is that if we minimize that connection, we can reduce labor to increase profit. Our whole job is to do the exact opposite of that,” he says. “We are not a tech company. We are a human company. And that’s the entire bet we’re making.” A hungry audience In the months that Face Plant has been opened, Plitch says their expectations have been “blown away.” In the first month alone, sales were five times what he expected; they’re planning to continue expanding their nighttime hours, eventually staying open until 2 a.m., and to add delivery and catering soon. And customers seem impressed so far: The vegan joint has over 600 reviews on Google, the vast majority of them five stars. “You’ve got truckers ordering next to University of Portland kids and everything in between,” Plitch says. On this front, the location is a big help: It’s a major funnel for people heading to or from the interstate highway and is in a bit of a restaurant wasteland, which likely makes it an even more attractive option for people who work nearby. The price is a factor as well, which was Plitch’s aim from the start. He says their goal was just to be around a dollar more than a comparable McDonald’s menu item. “We spent three years to make sure the cost could be competitive with the big nationals,” he says. “Our most expensive meal is $13.49.” He also stresses the importance of taste and freshness compared to their competitors. The fries are made with a bit of white vinegar; the cold brew shakes have instant coffee crystals. Face Plant employees slice the onions, lettuce, and tomatoes every day in house; they also make between 1,000 and 1,500 patties every dayhand-mixing the Impossible meat with their own proprietary blend of spices. And as a meat eater myself (who’d love to be eating less meat), I was right there with them when I tried Face Plant’s burger (I went with the “fancy”). The bun was fluffy, the patty had a smashburger quality to it, and the sauce had just enough tang. But interestingly, what struck me the most were the veggies: The iceberg was perfectly crisp, the onions were thinly sliced, and the pickles immediately sent me back to the 39-cent McDonald’s cheeseburger of my childhood. I was eating a fast food burger, and it was good. While Plitch doesn’t plan to dramatically grow the menu, he has big plans to expand Face Plant’s presence. He hopes to open a second location in the next year and a half (likely also in Portland or elsewhere in Oregon or Washington), but he has global ambitions far beyond that. “Our aim is to become the most loved fast food worldwide and take down McDonald’s,” he says. “It’s going to be insanely hard but that’s the hope.”
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E-Commerce
On August 5, new automotive industry data revealed how EV brands are faring in the U.K. and Germany, and the update marks yet another chapter in the saga of Teslas terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. According to the reports, Teslas European sales slumped in July, as sales of its top competitor, the Chinese company BYD, shot up. This isnt exactly a new story: Since the beginning of the year, Teslas European sales have been trending on a sharp downward decline, while BYD has made major headway in expanding through global markets. As this pattern continues to play out, the data points to the possibility that BYD is on a fast track to overtake Tesla at the top of the EV market. Tesla continues to stumble in the U.K. and Germany According to data from the U.K.s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), Teslas new car sales in the U.K. dropped by nearly 60% to 987 units in July, down from 2,462 year-over-year. The story was much the same in Germany, where the brands new car sales fell by around 55%, based on data from the road traffic agency KBA. Teslas slump cant be attributed to an overall decline in the EV market, either: Total EV sales were up by 9.1% for the month in the U.K., and up 58% in Germany. BYD, on the other hand, saw massive gains in Europe this past month. In the U.K., the brand quadrupled its year-over-year sales for the month to a total of 3,184. In Germany, sales went up almost fivefold to 1,126 cars sold. At this point, Tesla is falling solidly behind BYD in the European market. By late March of this year, Tesla had already sold nearly 43% fewer cars in the region compared to the same period in 2024. In May, its sales in the U.K. and Germany plummeted to multi-year lows, allowing BYD to surpass it on European sales for the first time ever. Now, it seems like BYDs upward trajectory is only getting started. BYD may be on a path to EV market domination Tesla and BYDs battle for market dominance in Europe might be a harbinger of whats to come for the two brands on a global scale. In 2024, BYD topped Tesla in terms of total revenue, but it still lagged behind on overall profitability. In 2025, that narrative may be shifting. Per its second quarter earnings report, published at the end of July, Tesla notched its steepest decline in quarterly revenue in more than a decade, with a 12% fall. The news has caused investors to question whether Tesla CEO Elon Musks involvement in American politics has permanently damaged the brand. Meanwhile, BYD saw its revenue rise by 37.4% year-over-year in its most recent first quarter report. As pressure continues to mount against Tesla, the brand is beginning to bet more of its resources on breaking into the nascent robotaxi industry. On August 1, though, a Florida court verdict called the safety of Teslas Autopilot function into question, a development that may stifle Teslas robotaxi plans before they even get off the ground. Teslas compounding struggles, combined with BYDs meteoric success, may result in a very different global EV landscape by the end of this year. BYDs second quarter results, which are likely to publish at the end of August, will shed more light onto how the company is currently faringand how soon it might be poised to dethrone Tesla on profit.
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E-Commerce
As artificial intelligence reshapes every industry, America stands at a crossroads. We can either double down on our greatest competitive advantage, attracting the world’s brightest minds, or watch our AI leadership slowly migrate to countries that have figured out what we haven’t: immigration policy is technology policy. After over a decade leading AI initiatives at Microsoft, democratizing natural language processing that serves millions globally, I’ve seen both the promise and the peril of our current moment. The engineers and researchers building tomorrow’s breakthroughs are increasingly weighing their options. The question isn’t whether they want to build in America, it’s whether America wants to make it possible. The Talent Pipeline America Built Let’s start with what we’re doing right. The U.S. has created an unmatched ecosystem with 59% of the world’s top-tier AI researchers. We’ve built the universities, the venture capital networks, and the innovation culture that attracts global genius. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI didn’t emerge by accident, they’re the product of decades of smart talent attraction. The data shows our success: nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, generating $8.1 trillion in revenue and employing over 14.8 million people. In AI specifically, only 20% of top researchers earned their undergraduate degrees in the U.S., but 59% choose to do their breakthrough work here. We’re not starting from zero, we’re optimizing a proven winning formula. When we get immigration right, the returns are extraordinary. H-1B workers earn a median wage of $108,000 compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers generally, contributing significantly to tax revenue and consumer spending. Research shows that when immigrant college graduates increase by 1%, patents per capita increase by 918%. Each talented engineer who builds here creates jobs for American workers through the companies they found and the teams they build. When Timing Costs Talent The challenge isn’t our destination, it’s our process. Processing times for employment-based Form I-129 petitions, the petitions U.S. employers must file to request permission for a foreign national to work temporarily under visas like the H1B or O1, have climbed sharply. They rose more than 25% last quarter and over 80% compared to a year ago, according to USCIS Q2 FY2025 data, even though the overall backlog has decreased. At the same time, EB-1A cases, which are meant for individuals with extraordinary ability, reached a record high of 16,000 pending petitions. For the people leading advances in AI, these are not just delays. They are missed opportunities. In a field where timing is everything, a slow and unpredictable immigration process can push talent to build somewhere else. The Global Competition Advantage Meanwhile, our allies have streamlined their approach. Canada’s Global Talent Stream processes work visas in two weeks. Australia’s National Innovation Visa offers permanent residency with 13 month processing times for exceptional talent. The UK’s Global Talent visa fast-tracks digital technology experts, including those in AI and fintech. Meanwhile in the U.S., work visa petitions like the H1B and O1 often take several months to process. Employers must pay thousands in additional fees for premium processing just to reduce the wait to 15 business days. These aren’t just policy differences, they’re strategic choices. While we debate, they’re decisively capturing talent that could be strengthening American innovation. But this also represents an opportunity: if they can create efficient systems, so can we. Evolving Policies and Smarter Strategies The encouraging news is that progress is underway. In 2024, policy clarifications helped redefine specialty occupation criteria, making it easier for AI engineers and data scientists to qualify for H1B visas without triggering burdensome requests for evidence. In 2023, the Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence issued to Congress aimed to modernize immigration pathways for technical talent. In 2025, a new Executive Order on AI introduced a broader national strategy focused on innovation, safety, and global competitiveness. While the new order replaced the earlier 2023 directive, it places less emphasis on immigration and education, areas that many experts see as critical to long-term AI leadership. Forward-thinking companies are also adapting. Many are exploring O-1 visas for extraordinary ability, which aren’t subject to annual caps, or EB-2 National Interest Waivers for researchers whose work benefits the U.S. The key is matching the right visa strategy to each individual’s profile, something that requires expertise but yields dramatically better outcomes. America’s Enduring Advantage The infrastructure is already here: world-class universities, robust venture capital, and innovation ecosystems that remain the global gold standard. We need immigration processes that match the speed of the minds we’re trying to attract. According to research from the Center for Growth and Opportunity, a startup visa could create 500,000 to 1.6 million new jobs over 10 years. Our choice is simple: we can streamline the pathways for global talent to contribute to American innovation, or we can watch other nations benefit from the minds we educated and inspired. The future belongs to countries that can attract and empower the world’s brightest. America built that playbook, now we need to execute it.
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E-Commerce
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