When Dan Patino co-founded Salad and Go 12 years ago, he set out to nourish communities with food that was healthy, affordable and fast. His approach: Build salads from the ground up.
“We go directly to the source to make our salads affordable and flavorful,” said Patino, who also is executive chef of the 150-location chain. In addition, Salad and Go has two centralized commissaries for prep ingredients, and compact, 750-square-foot drive-thru units—all of which make it possible to charge under $8 for a fresh, made-to-order salad with protein.
It’s a hard to order a meal from most salad concepts without dropping at least $10, but Tempe, Arizona-based Salad and Go aims to put fresh vegetables in front of the masses; targeting the McDonald’s customer—not the Sweetgreen regular—with a healthier alternative at a fast-food price point.
It starts with the farmers
During the Ideation Fresh Foodservice Forum at the recent New York Produce Show, Patino described why knowing how a product is grown is an important part of being a salad chef. Take romaine lettuce, for example—the base for a lot of Salad and Go’s menu.
The outer leaves from the heads of romaine coming into the commissaries were falling off and couldn’t be used. “We build flavor in the salad by using the entire head. Each part of romaine tastes different, so we create the perfect ratio and flavor profile by combining all the parts,” he said.
To solve the problem, Patino went to the farm and noticed that the lettuce heads were planted 18 inches apart, allowing the outer sections to flower out. “So I talked to the farmer and suggested he plant them eight inches apart so the leaves would touch each other as they grew. That prevented them from flowering out and losing the outer leaves,” he said.
The farmers are often in on menu R&D, too. “I might say ‘I’m looking for this particular type of broccoli—can you grow it,”’ Patino said. “Or a farmer will let us know that he’s growing a lot of cucumbers or squash, can we use it in a limited-time item in about a year.”
At the commissaries, the teams break down the lettuces, combining the different parts of romaine into a consistent mix. The commissary teams are also responsible for prepping other greens, cutting and roasting vegetables, cooking proteins like chicken and steak, making salad dressings, and other time-consuming steps.
Salad and Go drive-thrus are a compact 750 square feet to maximize efficiency. | Photo courtesy of Salad & Go.
All the salad components are transported every day to each location. “The drive-thrus are set up like garde manger stations, with around six team members making salads during the lunch rush,” said Patino. There are 10 curated salads on the menu at any one time, including standards like Caesar, Cobb, Greek and Thai as well rotating seasonal and superfood salads. Since the ingredients are all prepped and organized “mis en place,” the salads come together quickly, assembly-line style.
Building a better salad
During the Foodservice Forum, Patino and Tim Sablick, Salad and Go’s manager of culinary innovation, demonstrated how to build a salad so that all the components and flavors play well together.
“You start with the basic leaf base,” said Patino. The greens contribute bitter notes, and the chefs add fat, acid and salt to balance those out. Fat may come from an ingredient like avocado or cheese, while acid comes from the salad dressing and salt from olives or nuts.
For the demo, the chefs started with Belgian endive, mixed greens and radicchio, explaining that if the radicchio is too bitter it can be grilled to take out some of the bitterness. Cubes of roasted butternut squash, candied pecans and pomegranate seeds were then tossed in.
Sablick stressed the importance of layering flavors and making sure those flavor notes hold up as you scale up the recipe and use the industrial-size equipment in the commissaries. “Sometimes the mixer or standing time can change the flavor profile of the dressing, for example, and you may have to tweak the recipe,” he said.
For the demo salad, the chefs created a nutrient-rich zero-waste recipe. They overcooked some of the excess butternut squash and pureed it, then combined the puree with apple cider vinegar, caramelized shallots, Dijon mustard, garlic, sage, a little brown sugar and a blend of olive oil and safflower oil.
The finished product closely resembled the Roasted Autumn Salad, a seasonal item currently on Salad and Go's menu. That one’s a toss of sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, candied pecans, dried cranberries, grated Parmesan, romaine and chicken or tofu paired with balsamic dressing.