“Freedom Bowls” acai spot is California’s best MAGA culture

Miles Clay writes for Rolling Stone magazine

You may have heard that conservatives are building a parallel economy. Rather than waiting for the next major beer or sneaker brand to boycott it again when it inevitably gets “woke,” establish a business that clearly promotes traditional values ​​from the get-go. Don’t like Bud Light anymore? Sounds like you need a super patriotic ultra light beer. Can’t stand Nike? UNITUS is a sports apparel company that “defends faith, family and freedom” and sells shoes printed with Bible quotes.

In theory, companies cannot be politicized in this way to cater to the polarized half of the electorate who feel threatened by capitalizing on LGBTQ pride or paying lip service to diversity and social justice. There are no products. Still, there’s cognitive dissonance with concepts like Freedom Bowls, a brand new chain of health food restaurants with a strong Donald Trump theme that serves acai bowls and smoothies. There’s this apparent inconsistency in his MAGA messaging in sunny Southern California.

On Thursday, I drove east from the liberal bubble of Los Angeles toward the vast metropolitan area known as the Inland Empire. This region is the most divided when it comes to culture wars. Freedom Bowls opened a second store earlier this month in Redlands, the city where Biden won the 2020 election and Trump lost by nine points. The brand opened a store in Lake Elsinore on the South Side a few weeks ago, garnering both very positive and very negative Yelp reviews. “Let me start by saying that I love the attitude of this company, but we have a lot of work to do to be successful,” said one person, rattling off a list of complaints about the store’s service and cleanliness. the customer wrote. Some wrote five-star reviews praising the food and, of course, the atmosphere.

The unusual restaurant is the brainchild of entrepreneur Eric Martinez, best known as the founder of Cookie Plug, a hip-hop-themed bakery chain with locations across the U.S., who last year partnered with rapper LL Cool J. As a result, he led a major expansion. It currently supplies cookies to acai shops, and in fact, Freedom Bowl in Redlands used to be a Cookie Plug. But Martinez, who had a long history in the retail industry before striking out on his own, chose a much different model for his latest venture.

“I feel like this country is at a crossroads,” Martinez said. rolling stone. “There’s a lot of division that the media is reporting, but in reality everyone is cool with each other. What we’re being shown on social media and in the news is that we all hate each other. But that’s not really the case.” He sees Freedom Bowls not just as an idea with viral potential, but as a symbol of national identity and flag waving that he remembers seeing after 9 p.m. He is paying attention to the growth of his Instagram account, saying it is an attempt to “get the country back on track” with patriotism. /11. In his opinion, Trump is largely absent from the equation, but he certainly prefers the former president to Biden and plans to vote for him in November. (“I like Ramaswamy, but it’s not his time yet,” Martinez says when considering replacement candidates. RFK Jr. also has his approval.)

When I arrived at the Redlands spot around lunchtime, I saw several women leaving with bowls. There are no seats inside the store, so takeout only. They wore plain athletic leggings and sweatshirts, nothing to indicate they were proud Trump supporters. The front door had some clues as to what was inside. A decal with an anti-“snowflake” decal and a picture of a pistol with the words “Constitutional Bearing of Weapons Welcome Here.” Once inside, I encountered a larger-than-life Trump meme, like the ones you see on your Facebook feed, aimed directly at me.

The entire vertical surface of the modest space was decorated with American flags, bald eagles, and at least one fake quote from Thomas Jefferson. In one corner, Biden, Bill Gates, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Hillary Clinton, who was labeled a “traitor” , which featured AI-generated portraits of some of the far-right’s favorite villains (no actual words, as far as I can tell). T-shirts for sale were hung in the window. One shirt depicted a rifle and read, “Red, white, pew pew pew,” while another explained, “The Second Amendment is basically America’s communist vaccine.”

Then there was the mind-boggling menu, which listed prices in $1, $5, and $10 bills rather than numbers, presumably to show off the founding fathers and presidents featured on the bills. The Deflation Act special, which offered custom bowls of “Freedom Bites” cookies, “Freedom Juice” and dog treats for $17.76, appeared to be aimed at the economy under the current president’s administration. .

The women on staff were pleasant and didn’t seem to aspire to the hardcore ideology that others promoted. I sampled the acai itself before ordering the “Founder’s Bowl,” which includes blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, peanut butter, and at least six other ingredients. Leave the cards on the table. I don’t think there’s anything particularly appealing about throwing a bunch of raw foods together in a bowl and mixing them together, so I just nibbled on it experimentally. It was hard to imagine Trump, who is known for his greasy diet, sampling even a spoonful.

“I don’t think America has really been health conscious for a long time,” Martinez says. “Comparing 20 years ago to now, there are fewer able-bodied men in society, right?” “All the words that make us feel like we can’t do something” are the culprit. Freedom One wall of his bowl begins, “They want you to get fat and healthy,” a kind of self-help that asserts, “Personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion.” It acts as a manifesto. But Martinez acknowledged with a laugh that Trump might be an odd mascot for a health food brand. “He never really thought about what this guy was eating,” he says. “He’s an older gentleman, but if you compare now to when he was younger, he looks like he’s put on a few pounds. I mean, I’ve never thought of him as a model of fitness.”

One of the employees, Stacey, says: rolling stone She said she first showed up for an interview for a job at Cookie Plug. However, when she came to the store, she learned that the store was being renovated to reopen as Freedom Bowls. She was asked if she didn’t mind the MAGA decorations and she replied that she didn’t mind, although she still wanted the job. “I thought it might be,” she said of her decision to be interviewed. Martinez says that’s the extent of the politics involved in the hiring process, and that if someone decides the atmosphere isn’t for them, there’s no harm done and no foul play. “We want people to feel included in their workplace,” he adds.

Stacy recalls being shocked by the new look. “It was very open, very dignified,” she says. As for her own political allegiance, she did not vote for Trump in 2020, but she believes Trump won the election. (He didn’t.) “That part is a little overdone,” Stacey admits, pointing to a wall where Hillary Clinton and others are depicted as traitorous villains. “But I try to think of it like we’re in Associated Press history — there’s George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, there’s independence. Rather, I try to think of it like, we’re just being patriotic. Masu.”

“Everyone who comes here is really nice,” Stacey added. “I think the only people who come here are people who follow this policy.” [social media] account. They basically like what they see. ” Do customers talk politics? “Sometimes, yes,” she admitted. “They’re going to be like, ‘We love Trump!'” Martinez agreed that the feedback has been mostly encouraging, and his hope at Freedom Bowls is that consumers He emphasized that the conversation should begin with a reminder that personal opinions and preferences should be expressed. “Everyone has a choice,” he says. “That’s what makes America great.”

In Stacey’s experience, the negative comments only appear online, but after at least two people came into the store and encountered the Trump portrait, there was an atmosphere of “Oh, I think we’re in the wrong place.” She saw him leave. Overall, she and other employees say business is good. And, to her knowledge, no one came in with a gun. As her uniform, she wears a Freedom Bowls T-shirt that celebrates no firearms. It says “Dogs & Freedom” in an American flag pattern. “I have a dog, and the freedom is great,” she says. “Everyone thinks [here] I have a dog shirt. ”

In the end, I felt a similar political detachment at Freedom Bowls, and the few other patrons I visited there seemed to treat Freedom Bowls like any other casual lunch spot. Perhaps our ability to ignore such strong images is a measure of how often we are exposed to them.

This is just one of the many contradictions at the heart of the Freedom Bowl. This is a snow-free zone, which ironically provides a kind of safe space for MAGA voters to connect. “I expected it to be polarizing,” Martinez said, but he also wants Americans to remember what they have in common. He’s offering vegan options to a demographic that isn’t afraid to criticize others for their lifestyle choices, at least on Twitter. (Martinez himself criticized Bill Gates for his opposition to red meat, saying, “No one wants to eat crickets,” and wondering if the government would one day force people to live off insects.) Alluding to the fears of the right.)

I point out that this chain is part of a trend of small businesses flaunting conservative colors in opposition to corporate neoliberalism. While agreeing with this, Martinez said the phenomenon is actually about how people “want to support real businesses,” regardless of their differences of opinion, and that they “favor businesses.” You don’t have to agree 100 percent with everything about the business.” that’s right. ” Of course, this philosophy runs completely counter to the parallel economy movement, which is based on a strict alignment of values ​​between customers and brands.

So could the internal validity of the Freedom Bowl be secondary to its novelty? The Cookie Plug gained popularity thanks to TikTok buzz, and Martinez is pinning its unique aesthetic to sales. He’s proven to be so good that he already has plans to open another acai shop in San Diego, followed by a food truck. This blitzkrieg on social media and on the ground is a Trumpian strategy that promises victory by momentum. In the end, Martinez seems more interested in positioning himself as a mogul than in converting others to Donald’s cause. “I don’t want passive income,” he wrote on LinkedIn last year. “I want a fucking empire.”

That doesn’t mean he’ll turn down the Trump campaign’s appearance at the Freedom Bowl. “If he wanted to come in, that would be pretty, pretty incredible,” Martinez says. It seems hard to deny that anyone would be excited if the McDonald’s Devil tried acai. No, just hearing his pronunciation would be outrageous.