'Healthy Fast Food?'

An obsessed food label-reader, I count calories, measure out exact serving sizes and often look for lower-fat and lower-calorie alternatives – that taste just as good - when cooking.

But, eating out and finding healthy alternatives had proved elusive. Sure, I could usually find something from the one or two “healthy” menu options, although the limited choices always sounded like cardboard a la rice cakes in comparison to the meal extraordinaire. Not wanting to sacrifice taste for calories, I, nine times out of 10, ordered the less-healthy, but assuredly tastier entrée.

Then I found . And gone was my seemingly unending battle over healthy versus tasty.

In an unassuming plaza tucked along the ever-busy Horsham Road, I found my new favorite “healthy fast food” place. Owner Bryn Davis, 26, of Horsham, uses what he calls “easy fixes” to make typically unhealthy, yet wildly popular foods like quesadillas and wraps not only low in calories and fat, but also delicious.

Davis takes great pain to make or buy low-calorie, low-fat ingredients for preparing all of the eatery’s wraps ($6.50) salads ($6.50) and quesadillas ($4.50). He makes his own flavorful, fat-free sauces, including chipotle and taco; and buys tortillas that are 90 calories instead of the 300 to 400 calorie ones restaurants commonly use. Fresh fruit and lightened almond milk – read no sugared fruit or high fructose corn syrup – are the sole ingredients in smoothies ($4.50 to $5); and he buys low-fat peanut butter from a plantation in Georgia.

“It’s a lot of everyday common sense,” Davis said. “With this concept it’s going to happen. Healthy fast food is going to be a concept through my generation.”

Perhaps fueling the popularity of Bryn and Dane’s meal choices is the fact that Davis isn’t reinventing the wheel. The Cabo Taco wrap, for example, one of the most popular menu options, tastes like a burrito, with black beans, chicken and assorted condiments. This wrap - much like the Southwest Turkey (my favorite so far) - lacks nothing in flavor, but at less than 300 calories, is easily a healthier alternative to other eating establishments.

One typical fast food menu option clearly missing from Bryn and Dane’s, however are French fries. Davis said he intends to keep it that way. 

“You can bake them,” he said. “But, it’s still a ton of carbs.”

Instead of offering fries, Bryn and Dane’s makes air-popped popcorn ($2) sprinkled with either sea salt, sharp cheese flavor or crab-flavored spices. All are less than 150 calories and contain 3 grams of fat or less per full bag, which, when accompanied with a wrap, makes for a satisfying meal. The “sticky popcorn” ($3) is cinnamon-y, sweet, delicious and well worth the extra buck – and even a special trip.

Bryn and Dane’s regular Nancy DiGiulo stops by every morning for her daily smoothie. A nanny to Wesley Kropf, 3, and Charlie Kropf, 2, DiGiulo often comes back in the afternoons too when the boys ask, “Can we go to the place with the popcorn?”

As they drink their smoothies and nibble on popcorn, the boys likely have no idea that the food is actually healthy for them. That’s the gist of the Bryn and Dane’s eating experience. Nothing is off limits. Even the most obsessive label-readers and health-conscious people can eat without worry. And the food doesn’t taste healthy.

All of those notions were important to Davis as he worked to lose the 65 pounds he packed on during college. Then, with $12,000 cash and a few credit cards, a much slimmer Davis opened the restaurant in March 2010 after his exercise routine and healthy eating habits helped him trim down.

“Putting on the weight definitely was a good thing,” Davis said over coffee, during a rare break from the 250 plus customers who walk through the doors daily for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and afternoon smoothies.

The weight gain and subsequent loss brought him closer to his dream.

“I always wanted to pour myself into a business,” said Davis, who on most days can be seen swirling together smoothies in the front of the bright, cozy restaurant; in the kitchen making food; or dashing out on a delivery run. “I never wanted to own a smoothie shop.”

And he doesn’t. In a matter of weeks, Davis will own two as he and fiancée Tina Bucci eagerly await the opening of the second Bryn and Dane’s location, in Ocean City, N.J.

Bucci, the smiling face who greets customers most days, will run the shore location, which she said will only offer smoothies.

“The simpler the better down there,” Bucci said. “People don’t really want that many options on the boardwalk.”

Eventually, Davis would like to see his brother, Dane, a 10-year-old at , work at the business which features a cartoonish drawing of him (along with his big brother) on its menu and inside the restaurant. His two other brothers, who attend high school and college, will work at the shore location this summer, Davis said.

“Everybody feels like it’s a family business,” he said.

And, in that respect, Davis sticks close to his Horsham roots.

“I still live at home. I still share a room with Dane,” he said. “He’s still my roommate.”

For good reason. The bulk of the money earned is reinvested into the business. Last year, Davis said he put $50,000 to $60,000 back in, with the end goal being more locations. By February, Davis said he hopes to open a third location and then a fourth location by summer.

“Fast food isn’t going to go anywhere,” Davis said.

If he has his way, more and more Bryn and Dane’s eateries will be open, giving guests instant access to countless healthy eating menu choices. Good-bye slim pickings, hello countless healthy alternatives.