Amy’s Drive Thru expects to open organic Rohnert Park eatery in July

Are you ready to order? The wait may soon be over.

A cyclone fence in Rohnert Park still surrounds Amy’s Drive Thru, the company’s first organic fast-food restaurant, touted as a more health-conscious contender in a highly competitive industry.

The menu boards at the front of the eatery’s two drive-thru lanes have also yet to be installed. And managers on Monday were calling for some last-minute changes to the stainless steel stations for hand-scooped organic milkshakes. One for dairy will be separated from the non-dairy spot by a thin, shiny barrier.

Those stations should be up and running soon and the fence gone when the restaurant debuts for customers.

“We think within a couple of weeks we’ll be ready to open,” said Mark Rudolph, chief financial officer for Petaluma-based Amy’s Kitchen. He ate at the restaurant Monday along with a large collection of the company’s sales force now attending meetings in Sonoma County. The dry run was a means for the eatery staff to gain practice in taking orders, cooking and serving.

Rudolph emphasized the drive thru’s plans for “a soft opening” with little fanfare. As such, die-hard fans may want to keep watch to see when the fence goes away.

Buzz from vegetarian and organic food aficionados around the U.S. has been building for weeks with news of the coming of a new kind of drive thru, pioneered by one of the nation’s top brands of natural and organic convenience foods. The new restaurant is expected to draw attention from the fast-food industry, even as it attracts customers with an all-vegetarian menu of burgers, pizza, burritos and salads, all of which can be made either vegan or gluten free.

The only non-organic items on the menu are the sodas, and even they are free of genetically modified ingredients or preservatives, thus, requiring a specially designed cooling system to keep them fresh.

This winter, Amy’s, now 27 years old, said the restaurant would open in May. Blogs and websites later predicted a June opening. And Amy’s last week put out a news release saying the restaurant will start business in July.

The delay was partly because of the work needed to get the kitchen just right, Rudolph said. Amy’s has built a larger food preparation area than normal for the 150-seat restaurant and is taking extra care to make sure there will be no cross-contamination that could affect those who are allergic to wheat or those who insist on strictly vegan food.

“We’re making a statement,” Rudolph said. “You want gluten-free. It’s truly gluten-free.”

The restaurant is the brainchild of Amy’s founders Andy and Rachel Berliner, who publicly revealed the concept in 2012. The company first considered a Sebastopol location, but about three years ago settled on the intersection of Golf Course and Redwood drives near Highway 101. The new eatery sits along what Rudolph calls “fast-food row,” a two-block strip that features Taco Bell, Burger King, Arbys, In-N-Out Burger and El Pollo Loco.

The pending opening comes at a busy time in the founders’ lives. On Sunday, Amy Berliner, the Berliners’ daughter and the company’s namesake, married fiancé Jace Ricafrente at the family home near Petaluma. (The newlyweds can be faintly seen in an Amy’s Drive Thru ad now appearing on Rohnert Park’s digital display sign beside the freeway’s northbound lanes.)

On Monday, a restaurant tour for a Press Democrat reporter and photographer included tastings of a regular cola ($1.69), a hefty Classic Burrito ($4.69) and a Sweet Salad ($7.99) that consisted of “seasonal lettuces, roasted yellow beets, dried cranberries and candied pecans,” with goat cheese 75 cents extra.

Among the other items, a single veggie burger with cheese will cost $2.99; fries, $2.49; and a milkshake, $2.99.

The outlet comes with some earth-friendly flourishes. They include the restaurant’s living roof, covered with grasses and other small plants, making it one of the few Sonoma County structures with a growing gable. An adjacent water tower collects rain to irrigate the plants.

Uniforms, hats and head bandanas worn by employees are made of organic, fair trade cotton.

The building’s barnlike shape features an interior with a vaulted cedar ceiling, plenty of windows and walls of white tile and beige “ecoplaster.” An estimated 98 percent of the eatery’s wood was “upcycled” from discarded pieces or sawmill byproducts. The metal was sourced from local scrap shops, including table pedestals made from old auto brake drums.

Children will enjoy watching a machine just behind the back counter that halves and squeezes organic lemons for fresh-squeezed lemonade. The straws are paper and the drink cups and paper bags are printed with non-GMO, soy-based inks.

The venture has taken considerable planning to pull off. The London-based team of David Grocott and Bridget Dwyer have acted as design directors for two years and have spent considerable time here over the past 12 months.

The attention to detail and the desire to make a sustainable eatery won’t surprise those who know the Berliners, Grocott said.

“They’ve lived their life like that, so why would we not think this through,” he said.

Local food products include salad greens from Bloomfield Organics, fair trade coffee from Coast Roast Coffee, pickles brined by Sonoma Brinery, milk from Organic Valley’s North Bay farms and sour cream from Straus Family Creamery.

The eatery has hired about 70 employees, officials said, with a starting wage for “back-of-house” full-time employees starting at around $12 an hour. Benefits include vacation, health care and use of Amy’s company-owned health center.

Jeff Hooper, general manager of restaurant operations, said he is still hiring workers. He suggested the staff corps and its relationship with the public will be key to the restaurant’s success.

The employees not only must make and serve good food, but they also “have to know why they’re doing it a certain way,” Hooper said. “For us, the ‘why’ is just as important.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.