All-Avocado Restaurant Unveils Plan to Take Over the World

Avocado is one of those words that starts to look nonsensical if you see it too often or stare at it long enough. We've probably all realized that, because we're in the middle of an avocado epidemic, a strange time that future generations will study while examining how avolattes contributed to our now-defunct civilization's downfall. And despite all of the shelved thinkpieces about whether we've reached Peak Avocado, we can clearly get even peakier. The Avocado Show, Europe's first all-avocado restaurant, has announced that it is expanding and will soon have a number of additional locations in Europe, before taking over North America, Asia, and Australia as well.

The restaurant, which opened in March in Amsterdam's De Pijp ("the pipe") district, has been ridiculously—but unsurprisingly—popular since it served its first Instagrammable appetizer. Equally unsurprisingly, co-founder Ron Simpson gives a lot of the credit to social media. "We never sent out a press release," Simpson told MUNCHIES. "We just put it on Facebook and, before we knew it, we had publications in 30 languages in 60 countries or something. We never in our wildest dreams expected 200 million clicks, shares and likes in eight weeks. We thought it would be a thing in Amsterdam, but didn't count on crossing all those borders."

Simpson said that he had received "between 30 and 40 franchise requests" before The Avocado Show even opened, so it was obvious that its reign as Europe's only all-avocado restaurant would only last until a second (and third and tenth and…) location opened in a neighboring country. "We started very early to create the identity [of the restaurant]," he said. "Everything we did was already with our eye on the future."

The restaurant's expansion is largely possible thanks to a hefty €5 million (US $5.8 million) investment from Shawn Harris, the founder and former CEO of Nature's Pride, a European fruit and vegetable importer. (She supplied the restaurant—and the country—with a lot of its avocados). "She is the biggest lady in avocados," Simpson said. "She is the Bill Gates of avocados."

Within the next year, there could be an additional 15 Avocado Show restaurants, which will generate roughly 18 billion Instagram posts (that's our own conservative estimate). When asked which of the Show's menu items were the most popular, he said that they were all equally popular, but not equally photographed—which is an interesting metric to measure by. "Our Poke Bowl and the [avocado] Bun Burger are by far the most popular online," he said.

Simpson said that, despite more or less immersing himself in avocados, and despite eating more of them than even the most #basic among us, he's not sick of them yet. He's banking on the rest of us feeling the same.

As for the ever-rising prices of avocado? Well, The Avocado Show doesn't seem too concerned.