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Just Salad Partners With Arcadia to Offer Renewable Energy Deals, Free Salad

Always a trailblazer when it comes to sustainability, fast-casual chain Just Salad has unveiled yet another way to motivate consumers towards more eco-conscious choices: reward them with free food when they power their homes with clean energy.

The company has teamed up with clean energy startup Arcadia. Per an announcement from the two sent out today, Just Salad customers that sign up for an Arcadia subscription by the end of this month will receive a $50 credit to Just Salad. 

Arcadia stands out in the clean energy space because the company makes it possible for pretty much anyone to connect to renewable energy. By partnering with wind and solar farms around the U.S., Arcadia can source, verify, purchase, and retire renewable energy certificates (RECs) for energy consumers use at home — whether they own the house or rent an apartment. Purchasing RECs, which is essentially what Arcadia customers are doing when they connect their utility bills to the service, means contributing to the overall availability of green power across the country.

Arcadia operates across all 50 U.S. states, though availability varies within each state and isn’t everywhere.

Through the new deal, customers with a Just Salad account can sign up for an Arcadia subscription. Upon paying their power bill through the Arcadia platform, users will earn their Just Salad credit, which will be available digitally via the restaurant chain’s app. In some states, like “most of” New York and Illinois, the $5/month Arcadia membership fee can be waived. 

And while free salad is always a plus, the more important point of the Arcadia deal is that it potentially exposes more consumers to clean energy options they may previously not have known about. Just Salad’s geographic reach has grown substantially in recent years to include various states from New York to Illinois and down south to Florida and North Carolina. Arcadia operates in all of those places currently.

Encouraging and incentivizing customers to adopt more eco-friendly lives is something Just Salad’s been doing ever since it introduced its reusable bowl program, which offers customers deals and free toppings for bringing their Reusable Just Salad bowls to the store.

Arcadia, meanwhile, has partnered with food companies before, most notably in its deal with Freight Farms, struck last year, that allows CEA growers to connect their farms to cleaner sources of energy.

Restaurants’ Breakup With Single-Use Plastics Has Begun

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From monstrous portions to excess packaging, restaurants have a super-sized waste problem on their hands right now, and single-use plastics are a major contributor to the issue.

But as I wrote a few newsletters ago, the most effective way to combat this is not necessarily by expecting every restaurant out there to develop its own sustainability strategy. Many restaurants are right now just trying to survive the fallout from the last year. Instead, the fight against food waste, the fight against plastic waste has to include businesses, innovators, activists, and lawmakers alike.

We took a step in that direction this week when fast-casual chain Just Salad released a sign-on letter for restaurants and food/bev businesses to show their support for the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act (BFFPPA) 2021, recently introduced legislation aimed to curbing our reliance on single-use plastics. 

BFFPPA 2021, which builds on an earlier version of the bill, calls for reduction of plastic production at the source, greater focus on reusable packaging and containers, and more protections for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities, which are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution.

“The plastic pollution problem gets worse with each passing day,” Judith Enck, a former EPA Administrator and the President of Beyond Plastics, said in an email to The Spoon. “The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act is the most comprehensive and sweeping Congressional bill that addresses this problem.”

BFFPPA 2021 addresses all plastics. To drive the point home for restaurants, Just Salad introduced its own sign-on letter, which is a call-to-action for restaurants of all sizes to support the BFFPPA 2021.

Because of costs, operational challenges, and differing regulations from state to state, getting rid of single-use plastic is an expensive, time-consuming prospect for many restaurants. As a result, the restaurant biz generates about 78 percent of all disposable packaging. Case in point: plastic cutlery. The United States uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils per year, which is enough to wrap the globe 139 times. Don’t please get me started on plastic-lined disposable cups.

Just Salad’s letter outlines how BFFPPA 2021 could help. To name just a few benefits listed in the letter: 

  • More and better reusable programs, such as those currently in operation from Loop, DeliverZero, and, of course, Just Salad
  • Fewer single-use plastics, which are a major problem in the restaurant industry because of to-go boxes, bags, and cutlery
  • More standardized recycling and composting across states

“The BFFPPA would accelerate our respective companies’ efforts to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of our industry and create dining experiences that are healthy for people and planet. Supported by this legislation, our sustainability efforts would have a much larger impact,” the letter says.

Enck, in her email to The Spoon, expressed equal enthusiasm for the bill’s potential impact on restaurants: “Restaurants don’t want to contribute to the plastic pollution problem. When it is adopted into a law, this bill will eliminate some of the worst plastic products and boost alternatives to plastics.”

Just Salad is in the process of collecting public support for BFFPPA 2021. Restaurants, foodservice organizations, and food and beverage companies can show theirs by signing the letter. 

Speaking to The Spoon recently, Just Salad’s Chief Sustainability Officer Sandra Noonan pointed out that our efforts will “remain fragmented” until a national policy puts regulations around things like single-use plastic cutlery and does more to enable reusable containers, the circular economy, and waste management infrastructure. BFFPPA 2021 seeks to end that fragmentation, and with it, our longstanding reliance on the concept of single-use plastic.

More Headlines

Slice, a restaurant tech company that recently launched a POS system for pizzerias, announced it is also launching a loyalty program for pizza-loving restaurant customers. Slice Rewards will give users pizza points for every pie they order at a participating restaurant. 

Restaurant reservations platform Opentable has opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant it says will serve as a kind of innovation testing ground for the company’s technology. Dubbed Layla, the restaurant is now open for business at Kayak Miami Beach.

Churchill Downs Racetrack has released its official menus for 147th Kentucky Derby. This year, it includes online components, including a virtual cooking class with Churchill Downs Executive Chef David Danielson. 

How Restaurants Can Get Involved With the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021

Recently, federal lawmakers introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021(BFFPPA 2021), which proposes sweeping changes in the U.S. in order to curb our reliance on plastics and in the process improve recycling and lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

Now restaurants are getting involved, too. In an email to The Spoon this week, Just Salad — a fast casual chain that’s also a champion for more sustainability in the restaurant biz — said it has publicly given its support to the legislation and enlisting other restaurants to do the same.

Supported by Beyond Plastics founder Judith Enck, who is also a former EPA Administrator, Just Salad has drafted a sign-on letter for members of the restaurant, food service, and food and beverage industries. The letter urges other restaurants to get involved with supporting the BFFPPA 2021. 

The BFFPPA 2021, introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), expands on an earlier version of the bill. It retains provisions such as mandates on minimum recycled content for some products, more extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs in the U.S., and bans on single-use plastics. Additionally, the new version includes provisions that would reduce plastic production at the source and focus more on reusables. Finally, the bill calls for better protection for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities, which are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution.

Additionally, the BFFPPA 2021 would test more reusable programs, reduce single-use plastics, incentivize good design, lessen pollution and toxins, and strengthen environmental justice. 

Restaurants, of course, are a major contributor to our plastic problem, accounting for almost 78 percent of all disposable packaging. Meanwhile, the United States uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils per year, which is enough to wrap the globe 139 times, and globally we use hundreds of billions of plastic-lined single-use cups annually.

Just Salad, of course, is a major trailblazer when it comes to making the restaurant industry free of packaging waste (and any other form of waste). Others, including major QSRs like McDonald’s and Starbucks, have various efforts in place to curb our reliance on disposable packaging. However, at the moment, these efforts are largely siloed between individual restaurants and restaurant-related companies (e.g., DeliverZero).

“Many conscientious restaurants and food industry leaders are trying to reduce single-use waste and offer packaging that is truly recyclable and compostable,” Sandra Noonan, Just Salad Chief Sustainability Officer, told The Spoon. “But our efforts will remain fragmented until we have a national policy that makes disposable utensils available upon request only, encourages reusable bag and container systems, supports the circular economy, and improves waste management infrastructure.” 

Those restaurants and food businesses interested in showing their support can sign the letter here.

Video: Just Salad’s Sandra Noonan on Prioritizing Sustainability During a Pandemic

Start a conversation about sustainability in U.S. restaurants nowadays, and Just Salad will almost inevitably turn up in the talk. The New York City-based fast-casual chain has long been known for its efforts to make the restaurant experience a more environmentally responsible one, leading the charge on initiatives like reusable containers and carbon labels for menu items.

Like any other restaurant in the country, Just Salad, which now operates locations in several major cities, had to halt or restrict dining room service at all locations throughout 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some restaurants, this disruption might have also meant halting any sustainability initiatives. Just Salad had the good fortune to be able to do the opposite and increase its work of making the restaurant experience — in the dining room or off-premises — better for the planet.

“My focus was on navigating the pandemic with planetary as well as human health in mind,” Sandra Noonan, Just Salad’s Chief Sustainability Office, told me recently. 

Over a Zoom chat, Noonan and I discussed Just Salad’s sustainability work in 2020, including the chain’s new waste-free meal kits, the expansion of its famous reusable bowl program, and the complexities of bringing carbon labeling to restaurant menus. Our conversation, which you can watch in full below, also looks at sustainability issues and opportunities affecting the entire restaurant industry, including the concept circular delivery and the ever-growing trash problem plaguing today’s off-premises restaurant experience. Noonan also provided a wealth of insights and practical tips for restaurants looking to easily and affordable make their operations better for the planet and better for their budget in the process.

Watch the full video here:

The Restaurant Trash Problem Is Actually a Major Opportunity

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Here’s a small silver lining alert. The restaurant industry’s urgent shift to off-premises meal formats has created an urgent need to combat packaging waste. And people are finally starting to do something about it.

Let’s not sugar-coat the issue too much. Packaging waste is a major problem, one to which restaurants contribute greatly. Prior to the pandemic, some cities were taking steps to reduce or ban single-use plastics, and materials like polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) were out of vogue. All that changed when the pandemic forced the entire restaurant industry to rely on to-go orders for sales and regulations and company policies began banning the use of reusable containers for health and safety reasons.

In fairness to many restaurants, alternative forms of packaging (compostable, reusable, etc.) are expensive, and can even require operational changes for the staff. It should not be expected that these businesses suddenly come up with strategies for more eco-friendly packaging, particularly not at a time when many still struggle to keep the lights on and many more have shut down forever.

But those that can explore alternative packing options should, and of late we have seen some encouraging developments in this direction:

  • Last week, Just Salad announced its famed reusable bowl program would be available for digital orders. The company also highlighted, in its latest sustainability report, its Zero Waste delivery program, which integrates reusable packaging into the delivery order process.
  • Sweetgreen last week announced its plans to go carbon neutral by 2027. Details were pretty high-level, but the company already uses compostable packaging for its to-go orders, so it would not be surprising to see some additional developments in this area in the future. 
  • Just Salad was also in the news last month for the launch of its new meal kit service that’s free of both extraneous portion sizes and plastic packaging.
  • At the end of 2020, Burger King announced a partnership with circular packaging service Loop to pilot reusable food and beverage containers this year.
  • Ditto for McDonald’s, which struck a similar deal with Loop in the second half of 2020. The mega-chain has other circular solutions in place, too, like its Recup system in Germany.
  • There are plenty of other notable efforts being made here, from individual restaurants, like Zuni in California, to companies like NYC-based DeliverZero, which partners with restaurants to fulfill delivery meals with reusable containers. Additionally, Dishcraft Robotics lends some automation to the process of collecting and cleaning reusables at restaurants.

The bigger point here is that while we have a massive packaging problem on our hands right now, we also have a massive opportunity to change that and introduce new innovations in the process. Those innovations could simultaneously curb our single-use plastics problem while also addressing things like food quality, tamper-resistant packaging, and other elements that have surfaced over the last year. The public’s appetite for to-go orders is not going away. That means the opportunity to change our relationship to packaging is around for the long-haul, too.

Innovation won’t come as a one-takeout-box-to-rule-them-all format. Instead, what we’re more likely to see is collaboration among restaurants, material scientists, package designers, and many others. Nor will the issue be solved next week. Weaning an entire industry off single-use plastics will be a complex, costly undertaking that will probably meet a lot of resistance and a lot of failures.

None of that is a reason to ignore the packaging problem and opportunity. Based on developments from the above companies, many are already willing to start changing the system for everyone.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

White Castle’s recent ghost kitchen effort in Orlando generated so much demand the location had to close will not reopen until spring, when the chain finds a location better suited to meet that demand.

Food delivery search engine MealMe has closed a $900,000 pre-seed round led by Palm Drive Capital. Slow Ventures and CP Ventures also participated in the round.

For the second year in a row, the National Restaurant Association’s annual conference is cancelled due to COVID-19. Instead, the Association will host a series of virtual events throughout the rest of 2021.

Just Salad’s Reusable Bowls Are Going Off-Premises, Too

New York-based restaurant chain Just Salad plans to pilot its popular reusable bowl program for digital orders in the near future. The announcement comes as part of the fast-casual chain’s annual sustainability report, which was just released, and tracks company progress on making its business more eco-friendly.

If you’ve ever set foot inside a Just Salad, you’ll know the company’s line of colorful bowls made from heavy plastic resin that can be washed and reused on a regular basis. Just Salad started its reusable bowl program back in 2006 with the aim to cut down on single-use packaging for to-go orders. Customers could purchase a reusable bowl (mine cost $1 when I bought it in 2012), take it home, wash it, and bring it back for a refill each time they bought a meal from the restaurant.

In its most recent sustainability report, Just Salad said that sales of its reusable bowls grew more than 100 percent year-over-year in 2019 — then were abruptly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In New York City and elsewhere, reusable containers were banned from restaurants in an effort to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. Simultaneously, homebound customers switched to digital ordering and delivery formats, neither of which lend themselves to reusable packaging.

Now, in 2021, Just Salad said it plans to expand its reusable bowl program to serve off-premises channels like delivery. Under the new phase of the program, customers can order digitally for delivery and pickup. Food arrives in a Just Salad reusable bowl, which can be returned to any Just Salad location for cleaning and sanitizing afterwards. The phase is currently in beta and only available at one location, at the chain’s 3rd Avenue spot in Manhattan.

Just Salad told Nation’s Restaurant News this week that without any extra marketing done, roughly 30 percent of customers have already used the program since it launched earlier this year. 

The expanded reusable program is one item on a growing list of initiatives Just Salad has around sustainability — an area the company was championing long before the pandemic. Another notable item this week’s report mentions is Zero Waste delivery pilot. In partnership with NYC-based company DeliverZero, the Just Salad location in Park Slope, Brooklyn offers delivery items in reusable containers. Customers have six weeks to return the containers to either a delivery person or at a Just Salad location. Multiple other NYC restaurants work with DeliverZero, many of them local businesses. 

Hopefully that number grows, and quickly. If delivery and off-premises restaurant formats aren’t going away, nor is the mounting packaging waste problem, not if we don’t do anything to stop it. Restaurants account for 78 percent of all disposable packaging, much of it plastic. And plastic production has increased 200-fold since 1950, growing at a rate of 4 percent per year since 2000, with most plastic winding up in the landfill or ocean. Needless to say, our appetites for off-premises aren’t helping this problem.

In response, circular-economy-style delivery is slowly but surely making its way into the restaurant industry. Reusables are by no means the norm yet. However, major chains like Burger King and McDonald’s have various tests underway, which is encouraging for the industry as a whole.

Just Salad, meanwhile, has a number of other sustainability initiatives on the table, including its meal kit program aimed at combating both packaging food waste and a partnership with food “rescue” company Too Good to Go.

Just Salad Debuts Meal Kit Brand to Fight Food Waste, Plastic Packaging

Fast-casual chain Just Salad has launched a meal kit brand it is calling the “next generation of meal kits.” Dubbed Housemade, the line is available now exclusively via Grubhub, according to a blog post from Just Salad.

The standout feature of the new meal kit line (which launched very, very quietly this month), is its purportedly waste-free packaging. Anyone who has ever ordered a traditional meal kit knows that you’re typically left with a mound of plastic, cardboard, and dry ice after the food is prepped.

In contrast, Just Salad says the Housemade line uses “zero plastic packaging.” Instead, meals arrive in curbside recyclable or compostable packaging, and labels on the packages are water soluble. Recipe cards contain disposal instructions for the packaging.

In terms of what actually arrives in a kit, it’s a bit of a cross between a prepared meal delivery and a more traditional kit. For example, the Housemade Mediterranean Chicken Salad comes with uncooked chicken, rice, vegetables, and other ingredients. Items are pre-portioned out, so that the customer just has to put them into single pan and cook for 15 minutes. Since Just Salad won’t be using dry ice or other cold storage materials for its packages, meals are meant to be delivered within an hour. There is no subscription to purchase the Housemade kits, which start at $10.49 for a single serving. Users can simply head over to Just Salad’s page on the Grubhub app or website.

Meal kits as a category has long been championed as a potential avenue for fighting food waste because ingredients are pre-portioned and users get exactly what they need for each meal. The tradeoff for that convenience up to now has been excess amounts of packaging waste, which rather nullifies any other sustainable aspects of the meal kit.

Just Salad said in its blog post that its Housemade kits have “91 percent less packaging by weight than the average meal kit.” Again, the reason that is possible is because kits are have few ingredients, are available in single-serving sizes, and are meant to be delivered within an hour. Traditional meal kits, on the other hand, serve entire families, usually require a subscription, and are shipped across the country. All of those factors require more protective packaging (insulating, shipping, etc.) for any given order. Just Salad’s tactic of using its own locations to fulfill orders and delivering those orders within an hour automatically removes some of the packaging problem from the process.

In its blog post, Just Salad said meal kits “have a crucial redeeming feature,” which is fighting food waste, but that the industry must “rethink the meal kit concept” in order to effectively cut down on packaging waste.

Chipotle’s App Puts a Positive Spin on Measuring Ingredient Sustainability

Chipotle today launched the Real Foodprint tool on its app to help customers better track the sustainability of the 53 ingredients it uses in meals. According to a press release from Chipotle, this also holds the quick-service brand “accountable” for its actions and choices around farming and sourcing ingredients. 

The Real Foodprint tool compares the average values of Chipotle’s 53 ingredients against the restaurant industry average in five areas: “Less Carbon in the Atmosphere,” “Gallons of Water Saved,” “Improved Soil Health,” “Organic Land Supported,” and “Antibiotics Avoided.”

To get that data, Chipotle has partnered with research firm HowGood, which aggregates ingredient sustainability information from Chipotle’s suppliers. It then compares that information to data on industry-standard ingredients via information from the United States Department of Agriculture, the World Health Organization, and the United States Food & Drug Administration, among others. The score Chipotle users see for each ingredient is “the difference between average data for each ingredient based on Chipotle’s sourcing standards and conventional, industry average standards,” according to today’s press release.

Chipotle may be the first restaurant brand to partner with HowGood for this level of data, but it’s not the first to bake ingredient sustainability information into its menu. Panera recently introduced “cool food” badges to its menu that indicate which items have a low carbon footprint. Also in 2020, Just Salad introduced a carbon footprint score for each menu item.

But as I wrote at the time of Just Salad’s news, it’s unclear if labels like “0.41 kg CO2e” and “0.77 kg CO2e” will have any kind of impact on consumer purchasing habits, since not all consumers even understand that “C02e” is the standard unit for measuring carbon footprints. Chipotle’s approach, which explains each number in layman’s terms (e.g., “gallons of water saved”) might be more accessible for mainstream consumers at this point.

The fact that Chipotle has also opted for positive language is unique so far among restaurants tracking sustainability on their menus. And it could set a new standard. Research has found that positive reinforcement can be a much more effective motivator than negative feedback or shaming. So telling someone how much water they’re saving on an order could make the idea of eating sustainable much more attractive.

Since the Real Footprint tool just launched, it is far too soon to tell if Chipotle’s “positive change in impact,” as the brand calls it, will lead to more customers ordering lower carbon footprint orders. If it does, we will certainly see similar efforts from other major chains in the coming months.

Just Salad Launches a ‘Climatarian’ Menu for Digital Orders

Fast-casual chain Just Salad announced today that it will launch its “Climataraian” menu on September 17. The menu, available exclusively for orders placed via the chain’s app and website, will collect and feature those Just Salad items with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, according to an email sent to The Spoon. It will also display the carbon footprint and GHGs for each item.

The Climatarian menu will have two categories. The “Carbon Counter” is for customers wishing to have the bare minimum of carbon emissions associated with their meal. The “Conscientious Carnivore” is for “meat-eaters concerned about climate change.” The carbon footprint of each item in these categories will be displayed via the digital menu.

Just Salad hasn’t limited this carbon labeling to just menu items on the Climatarian menu. As the company announced back in June, all menu items on the Just Salad app and website will now come with a corresponding carbon footprint, which reflects total GHGs associated with the production of each item. The official rollout of these labels will happen alongside the launch of the Climatarian menu and apply even to “build your own” offerings. 

These menu additions seem aimed at taking some of the guesswork out of eco-friendly eating for consumers. It remains to be seen if seeing “0.41 kg CO2e” and “0.77 kg CO2e” labels on a menu will actually motivate customers to choose the more climate-friendly option in the same way they might choose the lower-calorie option when faced with the numbers. Carbon labeling on restaurant menus is practically unheard of at this point, so it’s reasonable to expect an adoption curve. 

Both the carbon labeling and the Climatarian menu offer us a glimpse of how versatile the digital menu of the future could be in terms of the information it provides. For example, carbon labels could automatically adjust in real time to include GHGs associated with last-mile delivery. And with more restaurant menus going digital and the sustainable restaurant discussion again becoming a priority, Just Salad likely won’t long be the only chain offering environmental info on its menu items. 

This week’s news folds into Just Salad’s larger sustainability goals, which include ditching single-use plastics and sending zero waste to landfills by 2022.

Just Salad’s Latest Menu Innovation: Adding Your Carbon Footprint to Your Meal

One of our favorite topics here at The Spoon right now is the reinvention of the restaurant menu. Social distancing and new guidelines around restaurant reopenings are forcing businesses to forgo the standard reusable menu and adopt digital versions customers can view on mobile devices. It’s a big switch and not without its operational headaches. But it also opens up a lot of doors in terms of the kind of information that could eventually be available on the restaurant menu. 

For example, the carbon footprint of your lunch.

Fast-casual chain Just Salad announced today it will now label all of its menu items with a corresponding carbon footprint. The score for each menu item is calculated in partnership with a team at the NYU Stern School of Business, and will reflect “the total estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of ingredients in each menu item,” according to a press release from Just Salad.

These carbon footprints will first rollout on the chain’s website. Since digital menus are becoming the norm, it’s unclear if those changes will make it to physical menus, or indeed if those will even be in stores in the future. An exact date for the carbon footprint info on online menus has not yet been set.

Just Salad’s online menu is already fairly robust in terms of the nutritional information it provides customers about their meals. Hovering over an item pulls up the same nutrition facts one might read on the label of a box in the grocery store, and, for build-your-own salads and wraps, updates itself based on each ingredient you add to the mix. 

Since the carbon footprint scores for Just Salad’s menu items aren’t yet live, we don’t quite know what they’ll look like in digital format. I imagine they’ll be merged with the ingredients interface in some way so that a customer can view the nutritional and sustainability info of their meal in a single place. And while there was no mention of it in the press release, one imagines food traceability information could also eventually make its way into this new format. 

The carbon scores are a small step in menu development, but very telling in how this mandatory push to digital menus could welcome a new era of transparency when it comes to knowing where our food comes from and how our eating impacts the planet. In the ongoing quest for silver linings to come out of the current restaurant industry upheaval, this is definitely one of them.   

In a Time of Broken Norms, Restaurants Experiment to Stay Intact

So earlier this week I was chatting with a food industry colleague who pointed out the sheer amount of opportunity food businesses have right now to experiment with existing norms. At the moment, breaking those norms feels less risky because in many cases we can’t do things the old way.

No one knows this better right now than restaurants. Dining rooms are closed and once they reopen they won’t look the same. Shifting to a delivery-takeout model is a necessity, but it may not make up for all the lost sales. And lately, restaurants are going far outside their normal territory for ways to survive the double whammy of a global pandemic and an industry on the brink of meltdown.  

Selling groceries is one way.

Case in point: Subway this week announced Subway Grocery, a site where you can buy pantry staples straight out of the Subway supply chain. Think foot-long bread loaves, frozen soup, bagged lettuce, and bulk amounts of bacon. The move is a way to get consumers goods that might not actually be in the grocery stores right now (thanks, panic shopping). More importantly, it lets the chain supplement its to-go format while dining rooms stay closed due to coronavirus.

Panera quickly followed that news with a similar concept, Panera Grocery. Customers can order grocery items like breads, produce, and dairy items straight from Panera’s supply chain and via the Panera app or through Grubhub. Like any Panera meal, the goods get delivered to customers’ houses.

And in NYC, just salad launched Just Grocery, which says it will deliver household staples — from produce to paper towels — in 90 minutes or less to Manhattan residents. The company also launched a meal kit service of items from its own menu, which customers can also order from the Just Grocery site.

If I were a betting woman, I’d say more of these initiatives are to come. Right now, big chains like the ones above as well as smaller restaurant businesses (see below) have no choice but to adapt their businesses to new formats so they can add incremental revenue to severely declining sales Plus, I imagine prepping grocery and meal kit orders is another way to keep employees occupied in the process, not to mention save on food waste costs.

But what about when dining rooms open again? Will restaurants need an additional grocery business?

I’ll go on a limb here and say yes, and that at least some of these initiatives will be in place for a while. The reason is that once dining rooms re-open, they’re not going to resemble their former selves. I’m just going off my own speculation here, but I foresee the days of cramped tables close together and family-style seating as a thing of the past. Restaurants dining rooms will have way less capacity, and more than a few people will be wary of going out to eat.

That makes the additional revenue from grocery businesses an attractive long-term play for many of these chains.

Small Restaurants Turn to Big Grocery

Other restaurants are turning to grocery stores themselves, not to sell pantry staples but to get their own meals in the hands of customers at a time when eating out isn’t an option. Texas chain H-E-B launched a pilot program to carry ready-made meals from restaurants in 29 of its stores. For the program, the chain has partnered with local restaurants, some of which have been able to bring back furloughed employees thanks to the extra work (and presumably money). 

And in some cases, grocery stores are actually doing the hiring themselves. When Greensboro, NC-based chain The Fresh Market realized it didn’t have enough staff to keep up with the demand for groceries as well as the chain’s deli counter, it reached out to Darden Restaurants to hire out-of-work employees from the company’s restaurants (Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse).

The sharing of employees seems more of a stop-gap measure than long-term employment solution for many individuals, particularly those building a career in the restaurant industry. Selling restaurant food in stores, however, might stick around. Like I said above, there’s a pretty good chance restaurants won’t be operating at their old capacity once dining rooms reopen, which means other sources of revenue — even incremental revenue — will be a necessary staple for some time to come.

DoorDash Slashes Restaurant Commission Fees By 50%

Of late, I’ve approached most news from third-party delivery aggregators with more than a little skepticism along with the question: Is this really helping restaurants?

DoorDash announced it is reducing commission fees for “local” restaurants by 50 percent, from April 13 through the end of May. “This is not a deferral of fees, nor will merchants be asked to pay anything back,” the company said.

Third-party delivery companies are getting an increasing amount of flack for those commission fees, which can go as high as 30 percent per transaction. Cutting back those fees would obviously help restaurants during this time.

What I’d like to know is, when will the other shoe drop? More and more, the major third-party delivery companies are seen as predatory entities that are astoundingly out of touch with the daily realities of running a restaurant. Is this news from DoorDash an about-face for the company or is the other shoe dangling in the air right now? Maybe it’s hidden fees or getting locked into a contract. Maybe it’s none of those things, though that feels too optimistic an idea in a discussion about third-party delivery.

I’ll be having a third latté and digging into the fine print, so more on this to come.

Keep on truckin’,

Jenn

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Sweetgreen, Taco Bell Using Their Off-Premises Muscle to Feed Hospital Workers Fighting COVID-19

Sweetgreen today announced the launch of its Sweetgreen Impact Outpost Fund, a partnership with José Andrés’ World Kitchen Center (WCK) that aims to get more food to front-line medical workers in hospitals, according to a company press release. 

The new fund comes just on the heels of Sweetgreen’s Impact Outpost program, which launched two weeks ago to get free Sweetgreen meals to hospital workers and medical personnel. Outpost is Sweetgreen’s delivery-catering hybrid service that operates portable drop-off sites for deliveries. Up to now, Outpost has been seen more commonly in corporate offices.

The Impact Outpost program places these drop-off stations in hospitals. After launching the program, Sweetgreen received a ton of feedback from both large corporations and individual customers wanting to support it through donations. The new partnership with Andrés’ non-profit is a way to provide this as well as increase the number of hospitals receiving meals from Sweetgreen.

From the press release:

“Through the fund, corporations, sponsors and customers are able to join sweetgreen and WCK’s efforts to feed more front-line medical personnel working in hospitals, while also helping fund new Outposts in relief sites, including schools, senior centers and in vulnerable and high-risk communities.”

You can donate directly to on the fund’s website, and even make a donation in memory or honor of someone. The site notes that this fund will remain open “for as long as needed,” and that right now, the goal is to deliver at least 100,000 meals to workers. 

Sweetgreen is one of several notable restaurant brands now using their established off-premises platforms to deliver food to frontline workers. Also this week, Just Salad announced a partnership with Mount Sinai to deliver 10,000 meals per week across seven hospitals in NYC boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Taco Bell has turned its Taco Trucks, which are food truck versions of the QSR, into mobile commissary kitchens that bring food to frontline workers. “While most of our restaurants are operating only through the drive-thru, this leaves some truck and ambulance drivers unable to quickly order from us,” company CEO Mark King said in a letter. He added that the chain is working with its franchisees to make this service available “where possible.”

Finally, Chipotle, another QSR with a booming digital business, is giving away free burrito boxes to healthcare facilities. The boxes come with 25–50 burritos, depending on how many are needed, and will be delivered between April 6 and April 10. DoorDash, with whom Chipotle has an ongoing delivery partnership, will handle the last-mile fulfillment of the orders.

There are bound to be plenty more restaurant brands using their existing digital and delivery strategies to more easily and efficiently get meals to workers while the pandemic lasts. And judging from the latest news, that could be a while. Stay tuned.