The fictional fast-food chain of Mooby’s, first introduced in Kevin Smith’s infamous Dogma before making several appearances in his Jay and Silent Bob universe, has finally become a reality. After a successful run as a delivery service, the company behind such popular pop-ups as Saved By the Max and Good Burger is teaming up with Chef Royce Burke and the Secret Lasagna team to bring a full-service pop-up Mooby’s for the next few months.
Screen Rant had a lengthy chat with Kevin Smith about what it was like to see his fantasy food place enter the real world, and how thrilled he is to help said real world by donating much of the proceeds to important charities like No Us Without You and Clean Up South Central.
I’m so excited that you’re doing this. I barely found out about this yesterday, so I’m really hyped.
Kevin Smith: We got very lucky. Back in 1998, when I wrote Dogma, that was when I first put Mooby’s into a script. And I remember in Dogma, we never went inside a Mooby’s. We just painted a Burger King, sat outside and ate. Then in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, we found a closed burger joint in the Valley, turned that into the Mooby’s, and actually got to go inside that time. Then in Clerks III, we spent the whole movie at the Mooby’s, and that was also a Burger King that’s now since been knocked down. And then, of course, we did it most recently in Jay and Silent Bob reboot. When we were in Louisiana, we built a fake Mooby’s.
So, I’ve been around 4 fake Mooby’s over the course of my career, and going as far back as Dogma, I remember going, “Man, wouldn’t it be amazing if one day this could be a real thing?” And it took 21 years, but we hit it. I got lucky because Derek Berry, who runs the joint, created this restaurant experience called Saved By The Max in Chicago. It’s a themed restaurant from Saved By The Bell, and then he came to Los Angeles and replicated it. And then in the same space, he’s done Good Burger and they did Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad. He does these themed restaurants in the same space, where every few months he flips the concept and suddenly it’s a whole new restaurant. Really smart man.
They were going to be doing a Clueless pop-up restaurant, in promotion with Paramount because it’s Clueless’ 25th anniversary this year. But it was right around the time the quarantine happened, and I guess Clueless was like, “We’d rather wait until the world is more normal.” So Derek was like, “Oh, crap, we’re at a loss.” And then he was like, “Wait a second. Kevin Smith’s got a fake restaurant called Mooby’s.” So, he reached out to me through our licensing guy, and I was like, “Are you kidding me? I don’t care how short it is.” Because it’s not long, right? Usually the concept lasts for about two months max, and then they shut it down. So I was like, “That’d be fantastic.” Since we’re dealing with a quarantine, obviously we can’t have people come in and sit down, so tried Mooby’s meal delivery, making happy meal boxes.
We did that last month or the month before, and it went really well. We gave all the proceeds to No Us Without You, which is a charity that looks after restaurant workers who lost their jobs during the quarantine. It went incredibly well – a little too well, we shut down the Postmates app twice and had to go to a different reservation system. You go to moobyspopu.com, you make an order, they give you a time to come in and stuff. So, it’s all reserved You can’t just walk up to it.
He had this whole system in place already with the three or four other times he’s done it, and for me, it was just a matter of saying yes. And once the charitable aspect got thrown in, it was a no-brainer. It worked so well that Derek was like, “We’re doing it. Even though nobody’s doing sit-ins at restaurants anymore, we’re gonna figure it out.” Over the course of the last month, him and his team totally banged out the space inside the restaurant, which is on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, and made it look like New Jersey. There’s the Quick Stop right next to RST video. There’s a corner that has Fashionable Male and Popular Girl store facades, and then everything is painted in Mooby’s colors. It looks like a actual movies come to life.
They’re wonderous at what they do, these kids. And they do it all the time. This one, they’re only doing for two months. By the end of the summer, Mooby’s will be gone. It’s heartbreaking that it’ll stop, but it’s heart-making that it exists at all. I credit them completely; Derek is a genius.
But this is always something you’ve wanted to do. It’s always been in the back of your head to make Mooby’s into a reality, right?
Kevin Smith: Yeah. I’m certainly no restauranteur and stuff, but before I worked in convenience stores I was a busboy for years. So the idea of imagining if this turned into a thing has always been a whimsy in the back of my head. No goal, not like I want to be in the food service industry. But more like, “Wouldn’t it be cool?” It’s just laying there. It’s low hanging fruit, and somebody smarter than me should do it. And somebody smarter than me is doing it. It’s just really kind of nice.
It’s more the sense of, “Hey, we accomplished this!” Even though technically I didn’t accomplish it. I lent my support, I drew attention to it, gave them artwork and stuff. But Derek and his crew just flat out built it. We got folks from Secret Lasagna who came up with the full menu – it’s items that we’ve had in the movies, and he found a way to make a Cow Tipper with three burger patties or three beyond burger patties. We do both a meat-eating menu and a vegan menu, because we’re Los Angeles and I’m a vegan as well. The whole thing has been creative, and watching them bring it to life without me has been [great]. I walked into the place the other day, and I gave Derek such a hug, because I’m like, “Look how beautiful this is, man.” It’s nice when there are things that happen in your world, where you don’t have to directly oversee them. I didn’t look at this at all until it was finished, and I was like, “Holy s***! Well done.”
In your podcast, you explained how Mooby’s was designed to recall mascots like Tony the Tiger. How ambitious are your dreams for Mooby’s even beyond this?
Kevin Smith: When we made Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, there was a kid wearing a fake Mooby’s outfit. I’ve been looking for it like crazy. We can’t locate it; can’t find the headpiece.
I don’t know if we’ll take it so far as making a corporate mascot outfit. Number one, it’s summertime in LA, it’s pretty hot. Even if we had an outside spin in the sun, people can’t come in, they gotta reserve. But if somebody wanted to come to us in real life and be like, “Hey, we’d like to keep this going,” I’d be all for that. Stranger things that happened over the course of my career.
But for this one brief moment in time, it’s fun. Especially as the rest of the world seems to be on fire. This little aspect of life seems to cheer people up online. I’ve seen a lot of people saay that with everything going on, it’s nice to see that Mooby’s is here.
Can you talk to me about the benefits of the Mooby’s set up? I think it’s pretty cool that you’re able to social distance, but still enjoy the experience.
Kevin Smith: In the other experimental restaurants that Derek has done, you go at your reservation time, they you a table, you sit down and stay as long as you like. But in the age of social distancing, they’re not doing any dining in the restaurant. We have a patio so people can take their food and go eat outside, or you can take food home. But when you get your reservation time, you show up and spend as much time as you want in the environment, taking pictures and stuff like that. And then when you’re all ready to go, they give you your movie meal, and you either eat it outside or off you go at home. We’ve got these stickers on the floor that are like, “You must remain one cow apart.” Everyone, of course, has to wear masks inside. So, it’s been neat.
We went on sale last week, I guess it was Wednesday or something like that, and we open up for real tomorrow. That’s when all the reservations start going into effect. In the one week time that we’ve done it, the response has been incredible off the charts. Our first week of proceeds, we’re donating to Clean Up South Central, a charity that Diamond Jones created not too long ago. She was like, “Look, I’m gonna get a bunch of people, and we’re going to go clean up South Central.” And she got so many volunteers that it went from a one-weekend thing to like, “Hey, this is an organization now.” We like that charity; it’s local, and we felt like this is a way that we can help out.
The pop-up with the Mooby meals that we did last month, all our proceeds went to No Us Without You. Throwing in the charity aspect is nice, because it also removes the frivolity of the restaurant in the moment. Right now, we’re going through something – not just health wise, but historically – in this city and in the world. So, there is a certain sense of, “If we do this, everyone is going to be like ‘this is tacky.'” So, we felt that we’d show we’re engaged with the community as well. We’ll donate the first week of proceeds, and that seems to have made it [better]. I haven’t seen anybody complaining or saying, “You piece of s***, there’s so much wrong with the world, and you think a cow restaurant is going to help?” It’s allowed people to make reservations and not feel like this is frivolous and stupid. The charity aspect lets people go like, “Hey, I can have fun, and I’m helping out too.”
Have you tried everything on the menu? And if so, what’s your favorite dish?
Kevin Smith: It’s so weird to say because anybody can make them, but Chef Royce came up with a recipe for Hater Tots. The Hater Tots made their first appearance in the Jay and Silent Bob reboot. His Hater Tots are so f***in’ salty, they’re the greatest thing I’ve tasted in my life. The combination of oil and salt was pitch perfect. I’m a hash brown eater, because hash browns technically are vegan; I ingest a lot of hash browns. These were phenomenal in terms of tots. Oh, they’re so good.
The Beyond Burger is wonderful. He does a lasagna sandwich, which is just genius. Take a piece of lasagna and slip it between two pieces of bread; just totally works out. But we got into bed with the Beyond Burger folks. They were real great about being partners, and so we were able to offer vegan options for everything, which is important to someone like me. Or more importantly to someone like my kid, who would bust my nuts if there was no vegan options at this restaurant. So it’s for both sides of the aisle, if you will.
Were you surprised how easy it was to recreate some of those dishes in this kind of fashion?
Kevin Smith: I mean, for Chef Royce, I guess that’s what he does. He had fun doing it. I was more surprised that anyone would bother, but there they are. And then Derek was coming up with little variations and fun ideas, like, they got these plastic bags that look like giant Capri Sun bags which are just filled with Margaritas. It’s called Fill The Cup, like Jay and Silent Bob always say, “I think I just filled the cup.” They’ve got Cow Pies, they’ve got chocolate-covered pretzels.
It’s like they went through the movies and said, “Let’s do this and this.” And each one, they found a way to bring it to life. The Cow Tipper in the picture of the Mooby’s is like a foot tall. Chef Royce made it with three patties, like you’re having a [real] burger.
