7 up-and-coming healthy fast food chains that should scare McDonald's

At the vegetarian chain Eatsa, customers place their orders on iPads and pick up their food from automated cubbies. Human workers, though, prepare everything in the back.

Specializing in quinoa bowls that cost around $7, the chain's meals range from 450 to 700 calories.

Currently, Eatsa (which debuted in 2015) has four locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In late November, it added a DC location and will open its first New York City on December 6.

With a menu that emphasizes locally sourced vegetables, Dig Inn offers things like maple and sriracha-glazed Brussels sprouts and poached wild salmon. Diners order pre-made mains and sides at a counter, which are placed in compostable boxes.

Since its launch in 2011, the farm-to-table chain has opened 14 locations in New York City and one in Boston. By 2018, Dig Inn's CEO Adam Eskin told BI that the company plans to open more Massachusetts locations and add others in a third state as well.

Dig Inn forms partnerships with local farmers, which allows it to keep its prices relatively low, Eskin said. However, the chain removed its small meal size option in 2015 (which cost around $6), so a plate from Dig Inn generally costs between $8-$11, which is more expensive than most food from McDonald's or Burger King. But not by much — in New York City, where real estate prices are among the highest in the country, a McDonald's Big Mac meal costs around $8.

In August, Kimbal Musk (yes, he's Elon Musk's brother) launched a fast food restaurant that serves sandwiches, soups, and salads — the majority of which cost $4.95. Called the Kitchenette, it's located inside the visitor's center at Shelby Farms Park, a 4,500-acre urban park and conservancy in Memphis, Tennessee.

The grab-and-go spot is part of Musk's larger chain of restaurants, called the Kitchen, which strives to use produce and meat from local purveyors. Musk hopes to launch more Kitchenette locations within Memphis and eventually nationwide, though there are no firm plans yet.

Freshii, a Canadian fast food franchise founded in 2005, offers salads, wraps, and bowls, the majority of which are under 700 calories and cost $7. It boasts more than 300 locations worldwide and is one of America's most popular healthy fast food chains. In the past few years, new locations have opened inside airports, stadiums, and Target stores.

In 2015, after McDonald's announced its menu improvements, Freshii's CEO Matthew Corrin sent an open letter to McDonald's, offering to partner with the fast-food giant and pushing the chain to serve healthier food.

Everytable, which launched two Los Angeles locations in 2016, adjusts its prices depending on what its local customers can afford.

The South LA location (where households earn a median salary of $30,882), for example, offers salads and bowls for less than $4.50, while the Everytable in downtown LA (where the median salary is $99,990) offers the same items for around $8. Both stores' ingredients are sourced from local purveyors, but the idea is for sales from locations in wealthier neighborhoods to partially subsidize operations in lower income areas.

Everytable's cofounders, Sam Polk and David Foster, told BI they plan to expand the chain to more LA neighborhoods and eventually to other cities around the US.

LocoL, a fast food concept spawned by famed chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, offers a new take on traditional fast food.

Its dishes might contain more calories than, say, a salad, but everything is made with high-quality, locally sourced, whole ingredients. In LocoL's cheeseburgers, for example, cooked grains and tofu make up 30% of the beef patties. Its chicken nuggets also contain fermented barley. Instead of soda, there are fruity aguas frescas made in-house every day.

The chain, which launched in 2016, currently has two permanent locations and an array of food trucks in Los Angeles. By the end of 2017, Choi and Patterson hope to have nine locations nationwide, including a coffee shop and a kitchen where their staff can prepare the trucks' food off-site, according to Eater.

If you're in LA and are inkling for a Big Mac, LocoL's $4 burger — and served at the same speed as McDonald's— is better for the environment, slightly better for your body, and according to First We Feast, tastes great.