The drive-thru entrance to a Salad and Go location.
Source: Salad and Go
When Sweetgreen went public two years in the past, co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman stated the salad chain aspired to be the “McDonald’s of its technology.”
But one other salad rival could beat Sweetgreen to the punch: Salad and Go.
Founded in 2013, the upstart chain is nearing its publicly traded rival’s retailer rely, with greater than 100 places and counting. With backing from its proprietor, personal fairness agency Volt Investment, it has formidable enlargement plans for 2024 past its roots in the Southwest.
Salad and Go’s attraction is available in no small half from its affordability. One of its 48 ounce salads prices lower than $7 and comes with rooster or tofu, whereas a comparable salad from Sweetgreen prices about $12.
As the chain plots an formidable enlargement path, its C-suite is filled with restaurant business veterans, together with former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison. He joined Salad and Go’s board in 2020. Two years later, Morrison took over as chief govt, departing Wall Street’s favourite rooster wing chain after a decade in favor of a little-known salad chain that then had solely 50 places.
“The model was designed round the concept of fully rebuilding the provide chain, and fixing what I consider is damaged right this moment,” Morrison stated at the annual ICR Conference earlier this month.
Since Morrison grew to become chief govt, Salad and Go has greater than doubled its footprint, which is now round 130 places throughout Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas. Last yr, the chain opened a few restaurant each week, and it plans to sustain that tempo in 2024 and enter new markets equivalent to Southern California. For reference, Sweetgreen has 220 open places, as of Sept. 24.
Morrison stated the firm is at the moment worthwhile in “established mature markets.”
How Salad and Go works
A salad or wrap from Salad and Go begins at one of the chain’s commissary kitchens, the place its produce is washed and its proteins are ready. Those substances are then shipped to its 750-square-foot places, that are roughly the similar measurement as a typical restaurant kitchen. The eating places have drive-thru lanes, however no indoor seating.
Its small footprint has helped the chain develop shortly with comparatively low hire. Other business disruptors, equivalent to ghost kitchens and the espresso startup Blank Street Coffee, have used the same actual property technique to lower overhead prices.
Salad and Go prospects order on-line or in these drive-thru lanes, and a group of two staff makes their personalized salads and wraps.
The simplified restaurant kitchen incorporates a walk-in cooler and cooling counters beneath the make traces the place staff assemble orders. Just a few substances, equivalent to the eggs for its breakfast burritos and avocados for its salads, are ready on web site, slightly than in its commissaries.
But the Salad and Go places lack the freezers, broilers, fryers, hoods and fireplace suppression programs that typical fast-food eating places want — and are sometimes a wrongdoer for delays as places wait on tools inspections forward of opening.
On common, a Salad and Go buyer exits the drive-thru line in underneath 4 minutes, in accordance to Morrison. Increasingly, its prospects are selecting up orders for greater than only one meal.
“The distinctive factor about Salad and Go in opposition to some other [quick-service restaurant] manufacturers out there’s that we get pleasure from a two-daypart single event,” Morrison stated. “You can present up at 6:30 in the morning and get your breakfast burrito, get your chilly brew espresso or sizzling espresso, and get your salad for lunch throughout the similar event.”
Replacing burgers, not salads
Charlie Morrison, CEO of Salad and Go, talking on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on Dec. 5 2023.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
As Salad and Go enters new territory, Morrison is assured that the chain’s salads have common attraction.
“We’ve been ready to put these shops in these differentiated markets, with completely different revenue ranges, completely different ranges of variety, completely different focal factors, and located that nice efficiency fairly constant,” Morrison stated.
Salad and Go’s first prospects in a brand new market have a tendency to be common salad eaters anyway, however Morrison stated the chain has additionally been ready to appeal to different shoppers as a result of of its low cost costs and attractive meals.
“What we see with our followers, with our visitors, is that this very sturdy loyalty and affinity,” Salad and Go Chief Marketing Officer Nicole Portwood advised CNBC.
Portwood beforehand helped flip Tito’s Handmade Vodka from a craft distiller to the nation’s hottest vodka. Like Morrison, she began at Salad and Go as a member of its board earlier than being tapped as its CMO in October.
Other salad gamers, equivalent to Sweetgreen, Just Salad or Salata, are often in the similar markets as Salad and Go. Salad and Go is not the solely chain to prioritize comfort for on-the-go prospects. Sweetgreen has been opening eating places with drive-thru lanes devoted to digital orders.
But Morrison advised CNBC that the chain would not fear about these choices, which often cost no less than double what his firm does for his or her wholesome fare.
“Our idea will not be tailor-made to compete in opposition to them. It’s tailor-made to compete in opposition to consuming events which can be unhealthy for you, however in any other case you could not afford to eat properly,” he stated.
In different phrases, Salad and Go is wanting to take down fast-food eating places equivalent to McDonald’s, which pulled its salads off menus throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and hasn’t introduced them again but.
Ambitions for 1000’s of eating places
Salad and Go is wanting to emulate fast-food rivals in different methods, too.
“We have enlargement plans that can carry us properly into the 1000’s of eating places,” Morrison stated. “Ultimately, we consider this model has the potential for a really giant footprint.”
Similar to Sweetgreen, Salad and Go owns slightly than franchises its eating places. That method requires extra capital — so do its commissaries, or central kitchens, as Salad and Go calls them. But Morrison stated the kitchens mitigate labor challenges, requiring much less coaching for its staff and fewer staff in its precise eating places.
Today, Salad and Go runs two commissary kitchens: one in Phoenix, and the different in Dallas. The Texas kitchen was Salad and Go’s authentic prototype, and the chain plans to improve to an improved facility by this spring that may service as many as 500 places in the future, together with potential eating places as far-off as Atlanta.
For now, Salad and Go’s targets for the future are centered on constructing extra eating places and spreading the phrase about its salads. When requested about long-term plans for the firm, equivalent to an preliminary public providing, Morrison stated all choices are in play.
“It’s much less of a priority now. The concern for us is simply increasing the footprint and moving into the market, fulfilling our mission,” he stated.
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