Plant-based specialty food brand Jack & Annie’s has launched its first branded partnership with a fast-casual restaurant chain, offering its jackfruit-based patties to dozens of Smashburger locations in Colorado, New York, and New Jersey.
The Plant-Based Classic Smash Burger will include American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, pickles, Smash Sauc,e and ketchup on a toasted bun. Customers will also be able to substitute the Jack & Annie’s patties for traditional proteins in all Smashburger menu items.
In addition to burgers, Smashburger offers chicken sandwiches, turkey and black bean burgers, salads, sides, and hand-spun shakes. It has 245 restaurants operating in 34 states and seven countries.
Although this is Jack & Annie’s first branded partnership with a fast-casual restaurant chain, the company has been supplying jackfruit and jackfruit-based foods to other restaurants for several years, Lisa Jarrell, national chain manager, foodservice, at Jack & Annie’s, told SFA News Daily.
“We’ve worked in foodservice since our inception,” she said. “It’s always a pleasure working with chefs to explore the range of jackfruit’s culinary possibilities.”
She declined to disclose the names of other restaurants the company supplies.
Carl Bachmann, president of Smashburger, said the new product aligns with the chain’s focus on menu innovation.
“This partnership felt like a natural next step in Smashburger’s journey to offer more diverse and clean plant-based options for our guests, while still delivering the premium, top-quality menu items our fans know and love,” he said in a statement.
Both Jack & Annie’s and Smashburger are based in Colorado. Smashburger was founded in Denver in 2007, focusing on high-quality, never-frozen 100 percent Angus Beef burgers and other fare. Based in nearby Boulder, Jack & Annie’s was founded by CEO Annie Ryu in 2020 and offers a variety of vegan meat alternatives using jackfruit imported from more than 1,700 farmers in India. The brand is made by The Jackfruit Company, also founded by Ryu, which has its own line of retail products and supplies bulk jackfruit to foodservice accounts.
“Our jack & annie’s plant-based burger is the best of all worlds – it has an incredibly meaty texture, and is made first and foremost from jackfruit, a plant that contributes to the sustainable future of food, while still tasting delicious,” said Ryu.
The company touts the plant-based burger as being a good source of protein and having 47 percent less fat than meat, while the jackfruit itself is ethically sourced and supports family farms, according to its website.
The company makes a variety jackfruit-based meat alternatives, including patties, tenders, meatballs, wings, and crumbles, available in the freezer cases of supermarkets around the country.
Plans call for expanding Jack & Annie’s products into more foodservice accounts, Jarrell said.
“We’re focused on leveraging our jackfruit research and development and supply chain expertise to custom-develop and launch delicious and simple plant-based foods with restaurant chains,” she said. “Because jackfruit naturally is so similar to meat, we’re able to replicate any kind of meat — beef, pork, chicken or seafood — with simpler ingredients and less processing than typical plant-based foods.”