North America's First Garfield-Themed Restaurant Coming to Toronto

- March 21, 2019

21 Mar, 2019

The image of Garfield has graced every kind of merchandise imaginable, but he's now become the face of an entire dining experience, as a Garfield-themed restaurant is coming to Toronto, Canada. This will make it the first of its kind in North America.

GarfieldEats is a mobile restaurant with a focus on delivery that's currently operating in Dubai, where the intention is for the service to be as green as possible, with food being served in re-purposable containers and delivered on environmentally friendly electric scooters. The creators of GarfieldEats follow the concept of "Entergagement", which manifests in the customer being able to engage with Garfield in various ways when ordering their food, such as being able to play games based on the character or watching clips from the Garfield and Friends cartoon series.

A GarfieldEats mobile restaurant will soon be available in Dovercourt, Toronto. According to blogTO, the physical restaurant won't have a cashier, as the customer will be expected to make their order using mobile phones that are attached to the walls. It'll also be possible to order food using the GarfieldEats phone app and have it delivered. The service has the endorsement of Garfield creator Jim Davis, who recorded a video for the GarfieldEats website discussing the history of the character and promoting the service.

The menu for GarfieldEats includes cookies and pizza in the shape of Garfield's head, several different kinds of lasagna, and skinny fries. There are also several different kinds of Garfield-inspired coffees and milkshakes, although they missed a trick by not including one based on Jon's infamous trip to the vet where he accidentally drank something that wasn't coffee.

Garfield isn't the only fictional character to be the subject of his own dining experience, as there's a business model known as "pop-up dining" that involves theme restaurants that can be easily assembled and are moved from city to city or are used for specific events. The 25th anniversary of Demolition Man was celebrated with a high-end pop-up dining experience at San Diego Comic-Con involving Taco Bell, which was featured prominently in the film. There are also cinemas that use a similar model as a promotion for certain films, such as the release of Captain Marvel prompting theaters in America to release menus based on the movie during showings of the film, as well as the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema using a menu inspired by the previews of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which involved food based on the planet Scarif.

The creators of GarfieldEats want to extend the reach of the service and open more locations over the next six years. The Toronto location will be a proving ground to see if people love Garfield enough to eat food that shares the general shape of his head. The Garfield franchise is one of the most recognizable properties in the world and there are likely a lot of people who'll be attracted to the environmentally-conscious philosophy of the GarfieldEats service, so it's possible that Garfield might become the global face of the mobile restaurant experience.