After weathering the stormy waters of produce contamination scandals, it looks like smoother sailing ahead for salad-only restaurant operators
After all, their flagship item is widely popular and in step with culinary trends and current ideals of health and fitness. In fact, the salad seems to have everything going for it, except a dominant national restaurant chain. But if some ambitious startup companies and regional chains have their way, that won’t be the case for long.
Not all that long ago, who would have predicted that Starbucks Coffee would popularize pricey specialty java across the country, or that Chipotle Mexican Grill would build a fast-casual powerhouse around the hitherto unheralded burrito? In light of those feats, coaxing customers to pay $6 or $8 for a premium, tossed-to-order salad doesn’t seem too far a stretch. In fact, it’s happening regularly in salad-only eateries across the nation.
“The burrito made its way from Mexico to California, and now it’s all over the place,” says Tony Shure, co-founder of Chop’t Creative Salad Company, based in New York City. “I think the salad is making a similar journey, from appetizer to main course, but it takes a while.”
Earlier in the journey, back a couple of decades or so, the salad was typically a starter or side composed by rote from unre-markable foodstuffs. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, it rose in status as new ideas of fresh, quality ingredients gained currency. Menu trends expert Nancy Kruse, president of The Kruse Company in Atlanta, credits California cuisine chefs Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck and Jeremiah Tower with selling leafy greens as an acceptable entrée choice.
“The idea of a nonhot component in the center of the plate was revolutionary,” Kruse says. “This has moved forward so quickly, I think we take it for granted as if it was always the case, but that’s not true.”
Salad-only segment pioneer John Scardapane recalls how limited the produce choices were in 1986 when he founded Saladworks, a chain based in Conshohocken, Pa., that has grown to 87 units.
“There were just romaine and iceberg,” he says. “Now the microgreens are out, and we’re implementing some of them this year.”
Propelling the salad as a menu mainstay is the new American attitude toward healthy eating and the growing concern about how food is produced.
“I use myself as an example,” says Dan Hicks, vice president of franchise development for Tossed, a 12-unit salad-only chain based in Fort Lauderdale,Fla.“Ten years ago, I didn’t care what trans fats were. I didn’t read ingredient labels.Now,it’s evident when you go to grocery stores or even fast-food places that people are eating healthier.”
The advent of labor-saving precut produce made possible one of the salad’s most important recent milestones, the introduction of packaged premium entrée salads by major fast feeders like Wendy’s and McDonald’s in 2002 and 2003. Not only did they answer the anti-obesity backlash, Kruse points out, they also attracted new customers, particularly women, who didn’t fancy burgers. For its part, McDonald’s has gained “tremendous credibility” for its salad program by including fresh ingredients like edamame in its Asian Salad and fresh lime in its Southwest Salad, Kruse says.
Today, salads are among the “glamour” categories of the menu, Kruse says.
“They represent tremendous creativity, flavor innovation, interesting plate presentations and plays of texture and temperature,” she says.
Fancy greens like frisée, Boston lettuce and endive rub elbows with high-end proteins like lobster, prime rib and tuna, typifying the “premiumization” trend, Kruse points out. Corporate chefs are satisfying customer demand for bold flavors with salad dressings like J. Alexander’s Wasabi Cilantro Vinaigrette, a flavor thrill couched in the familiar, she adds. Outfits that allow patrons to pick their own salad ingredients exemplify the “customization” trend.
Still, growth hasn’t come easily. Chop’t’s Shure says his company, which has four locations in New York and one in Washington, D.C., is focused on “opening one good new unit at a time.” But could he see himself growing the concept into a 500-, 700-, or 1,000-unit chain?
“I would love to,” he says. “You need a big company’s help to reach that density. But I think it’s achievable.”
At Salad Creations, a Margate, Fla.-based chain with 41 units open and plans for 80 more in 2008, president and chief executive Jeff Levine thinks even bigger: “I look at a Subway, which has 28,000 or 29,000 units, and I think there is no reason we can’t have thousands and thousands of units ourselves.”
What’s holding them back? Salad operators cite such challenges as managing a highly perishable, relatively high-cost menu, maintaining food safety and finding good expansion sites.
“Our major stumbling block has been real estate,” says Scardapane of Saladworks.
To speed its growth, it has partnered with a real estate company for site selection and signed an area development pact for Florida. It projects up to 42 openings in 2008.
Then there’s the economics of making top-notch, tossed-to-order salads. Operators who insist on freshness and quality not only have a higher food cost, but also they shell out more for labor to prep it and toss it to order. Kruse notes that the labor involved in tossing salads to order may be “a slight inhibitor to faster growth.” Nonetheless, “create-your-own” salads are extremely popular with patrons.
Chop’t’s 60-plus salad toppings, all prepared in-house, range from fresh beets to grilled Angus flank steak. Shure reports that the company paid 15 percent to 20 percent more for chicken, 10 percent more for bacon and 20 percent to 30 percent more for oils in 2007 than it did a year earlier.
“We have to find ways to be more efficient so we can make money on the prices we have set,” Shure says.
Scardapane says that resisting the temptation to use processed, precut produce is a key factor in Saladworks’ success: “It’s more labor-intensive, but we just have never been able to find processed produce that’s as good as what you chop yourself.”
Chris Dahlander, owner-operator of the two Snappy Salads units in Dallas, says Chipotle is his role model for using premium ingredients and prepping them on the premises.
“Lettuce, carrots, tomatoes—anything fresh, we cut it in-house, and we make all our dressings in-house,” Dahlander says.“There’s a difference.”
However, there are more streamlined ways of operating. At Salad Creations, Levine cites “simplicity” as the main difference between his concept and some competitors.
“We’re not cooking anything on-site,” Levine says. “Everything is coming in precut.”
Along the way, there have been some sleepless nights for salad operators. Well-publicized produce contamination incidents have cost the segment significant business, albeit temporarily. In 2006, when an E. coli outbreak from fresh spinach killed three people and sickened 200, outfits like Saladworks pulled fresh spinach from their stores as a precaution, even though they weren’t involved in the outbreak.
“It took probably six months for spinach to get back on the menu,” Scardapane says.
Chop’t management watches the produce markets so closely “we’re aware of contamination before it hits the CNN ticker,”Shure says. When spinach was implicated, they immediately switched from a California supplier to a Pennsylvania hydroponic grower.“Restaurant operators have to know where their food is coming from,” Shure says.“There’s no excuse for people getting sick.”
