Chopt Creative Salad Co. has been selling made-to-order salads since long before that was common practice. Founded in 2001 by Tony Shure and Colin McCabe, the New York City-based fast-casual concept has been chopping vegetables, topping them with a wide variety of proteins, and tossing them with dressings for decades.
“And you’ve got to get some crunch in the salad,” said Nick Marsh, CEO of Founders Table Restaurant Group, which owns burrito concept Dos Toros as well as Chopt, adding that, besides crunchy mix-ins, the fast-casual salad company has developed some 250 dressings.
“It’s a range in taste profiles, different cultures, and food styles, healthy to decadent,” Marsh said. “But Tony Shure had a saying many years ago: ‘The dressings have to deliver a flavor wallop.’”
That’s important, because customers aren’t willing to sacrifice just because something’s supposed to be good for them.
“Chopt got involved before salads were a mainstream thing for lunch, so culturally we knew you couldn’t ask the customer to give anything up, certainly not taste and flavor, and that’s carried through for us,” Marsh said.
Chopt had 88 restaurants in 13 states at the end of 2023, mostly on the East Coast and all east of the Mississippi River. It has plans to open around 15 locations per year for the foreseeable future.
The chain focuses on quality, whatever that means to its customers.
“Our motto is ‘better tastes better,’ and better means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” Marsh said. “One of our core values is to listen to the customer and not try to decide for people. So we feature some organic, some local, a lot of things with small farms or [other] partners. Probably the most fun thing we do is the partnerships where we try to find a small business and feature their product.”
At the moment that means using ingredients such as Ithaca Hummus from upstate New York and oil from Enzo Olive Oil Company in California.
Limited-time offers in the past have often concentrated on a sort of virtual tourism, with creations inspired by Peru, Italy, or the Southwestern U.S., but these days those partnerships are highlighted more often.
Chef-created salads are part of what Chopt offers, but 30% of customers order from the build-your-own option, and of those who do order curated bowls, some 80% make alterations.
Customizability is also an important part of Chopt’s loyalty program. It recently upgraded the program with proprietary software to allow customers to trade in their points in a variety of ways, from free toppings to special experiences, including VIP dinners with the founders where they get a first taste of new products.
Although founded in New York, where it mostly operates in business districts in Manhattan (the chain’s first Brooklyn location is slated to open this year), now 75%-80% of Chopt’s locations are suburban and operate drive-thru windows.
That suburban expansion is expected to continue.
“We serve a great salad and have a lot of passionate fans in New York City, but we’re not changing any people’s lives [here],” Marsh said. “When we get to some of the markets that we have been pushing towards for a lot of years, it is more likely that we are the first [healthy] or most healthy option around.”
And possibly among the most expensive, but Marsh said that average checks outside of New York are still below $15.
“That’s a guardrail that we constantly pay attention to,” he said. “It’s hard in this day and age.”
So is staffing, but Marsh reports that the chain has never lost a district manager or regional vice president, and added that a former delivery worker at Chopt’s first location is now the general manager of a Manhattan location with more than $5 million in annual sales.
“That sends a great message to everyone in the organization,” he said.
Average unit volumes systemwide are around $2.5 million.
Founders Table operates all of Chopt’s restaurants, and no immediate plans for franchising are underway.
“We certainly think that franchising and licensing is an interesting growth strategy and could come into play for us at some point, but right now we like the control over what we’re doing; we like the returns of our business,” Marsh said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have very good and stable financial partners [private equity firm L Catterton is the majority shareholder] … so a bunch of pieces have added up for this to make sense for us.”
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
