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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Just Salad

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

This is the post version of our weekly restaurant tech newsletter. To get the newsletter delivered to your inbox, just sign up here.

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.

Just Salad Outlines Its Goals to Send Zero Waste to Landfills by 2022

Fast-casual chain Just Salad aims to send zero waste to landfills by 2022, according to the company’s first-ever sustainability report, which was released this week. 

The report both recaps some of Just Salad’s efforts around sustainability and outlines the chain’s goals for 2020, many of which are about getting rid of single-use plastics and curbing and/or diverting food waste in its operations. These environmental commitments come under Just Salad’s Green Standard Initiative, which the chain launched last year and is already executing on in its 47 locations, which span five U.S. states as well as Dubai. 

Central to the company’s aim to get rid of single-use plastics is its popular reusable salad bowl, which customers can purchase for $1 (and get a free topping for their salad when they use it). According to the report, Just Salad diverted 75,000 pounds of single-use plastic from landfills in 2019 and plans to up that number to 100,000 pounds by 2022. 

The company says it will also implement a bring-your-own-cup program in 2020 that offers customers a $0.10 discount on beverages when they bring their own containers. As well, Just Salad says it is “evaluating all in-store supplies” and testing more sustainable options, including compostable to-go cutlery and cardboard containers for wraps in place of plastic ones.

Curbing food waste is the other big focus of the report. Last year, the company started a composting program at certain locations that separates food waste from other waste in the back of house. The company will continue that practice, which it says can divert an estimated 22,000 pounds of organic waste from landfills across its NYC stores alone. The program is currently active at Just Salad stores in NYC, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The company will include this food waste separation process in the front of house for certain locations in 2020. 

Many restaurant chains are now outlining major sustainability initiatives to address massive issues in the food industry around waste, whether it’s leftover food or single-use packaging that does not biodegrade. Major chains like McDonald’s and Starbucks have detailed programs in place to introduce reusable packaging, cut carbon emissions through alternative sources of energy, and curb food waste by diverting it from landfills (in some cases even using to to make automobiles).

But it’s not just the multi-national chains doing this work. Blue Bottle Coffee, for example, recently outlined an ambitious plant to make its stores completely zero waste by 2020. Company CEO Bryan Meehan was the first person to point out the initiative was an experiment that “may not work, that may cost us money,” among other things.

He has a point, and it’s one that more companies are starting to acknowledge as the dialogue around sustainable restaurant operations becomes more central, if at the same time more expensive. Just Salad’s founder and CEO Nick Kenner echoed a similar sentiment in the company’s sustainability report when he wrote that achieving sustainability is a challenge that requires logistics, money, and a change in consumer attitudes. “Affordability and sustainability are not at odds with each other,” he said. “While the sustainable path can cost more in the short run, it’s an engine for long-term value creation.” 

Chopt Is the Latest Restaurant Chain to Launch a Store Dedicated to Delivery and Pickup Orders

Chopt Creative Salad joins the growing number of restaurant chains building out brick-and-mortar stores completely dedicated to delivery and pickup orders. The fast-casual chain opened its first location for off-premises-only orders last week in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. 

Customers of the Chopt SoHo store can order online or via the chain’s mobile app, bypassing the need to wait in line and interact with a cashier. Delivery orders are handled by the major third-party services (Grubhub, DoorDash, etc.), while the SoHo location will also feature self-order kiosks for those walking in off the street. Those kiosks will be able to accept cash in addition to cards — an important feature in an age where the debate over cashless payments is heated and chains like McDonald’s have come under fire recently for kiosks that won’t take good old-fashioned greenbacks. 

Chopt hasn’t said whether its delivery- and pickup-only store will provide a new model for future locations. CEO Nick Marsh told Forbes that, “It will be a significant part of our growth going forward, though we can’t give a percentage on how many of them will open.”

Chopt isn’t the only salad chain in NYC to be experimenting with off-premises order formats. In October, Just Salad teamed up with Grubhub to deliver a virtual restaurant brand called Health Tribes to NYC customers. Sweetgreen, who raised another $150 million in funding in September, has expanded its Outpost service, which entails placing pickup stations in office buildings. The chain also just opened its Sweetgreen 3.0 store, a so-called high-tech location that emphasizes self service and orders destined for outside the restaurant.

It all makes sense. Salad travels well — better than, say, french fries. But — and this is the understatement of the week — salad chains aren’t alone in embracing this off-premises store model designed to fulfill more delivery and pickup orders. Chick-fil-A has operated off-premises stores since 2018 and just announced it’s also working out of DoorDash’s new ghost kitchen in Northern California. Starbucks has a to-go-only store in China and one planned for NYC. Masses of other chains following this trend is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

In a place like NYC (or San Francisco, for that matter), the model allows restaurants to utilize smaller spaces and cut down on the amount of rent they pay to be in business. And as demand for delivery increases along with the expectation for online ordering and self-service technologies, this to-go concept will become a de facto part of most major chains’ strategies.

Grubhub and Just Salad Partner for a Digital-Only Concept Restaurant

Grubhub just added another virtual restaurant concept to what’s quickly becoming a string of them for the third-party delivery service. Today, the company announced a partnership with NYC-based fast-casual chain Just Salad to launch a virtual restaurant called Health Tribes. Starting today, the Health Tribes menu is available exclusively for delivery and pickup orders placed via Grubhub or Just Salad apps and websites, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The overall concept of Health Tribes is around today’s most popular diet plans such as vegan, gluten-free, Paleo, and Keto. The virtual restaurant claims it will help customers more easily find delivery meals that meet those specific criteria eating needs and/or preferences.

It’s not clear in the press release if the meals will be made onsite at Just Salad locations or if Grubhub will use ghost kitchens for production, as it’s done with other virtual restaurants.

Health Tribes isn’t the first nutrition-focused delivery-only concept for Grubhub. The company teamed up with the Whole30 brand and restaurant company Lettuce Entertain You in August to launch a delivery-only restaurant based on the Whole30 diet. In the case of that “restaurant,” all food is made in a ghost kitchen run by Lettuce Entertain You.

Ditto for Grubhub’s other virtual restaurant concept, which it also runs in partnership with Lettuce Entertain You along with magazine-turned-digital food brand Bon Appétit. Bon Appétit Delivered, as it’s called, offers gourmet meals created by the folks at the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen.

Both that and the Whole30 concept are currently only available in Chicago. The Just Salad collab will be more widely available, as the chain has over 50 locations throughout Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, and other cities.

Health Tribes more or less confirms the idea that these digital-only concept restaurants are going to become a regular staple of Grubhub’s offerings. With ghost kitchens becoming more commonplace in the food world, third-party delivery services need to find new ways to differentiate themselves. Grubhub isn’t the only service trying ghost kitchen restaurants: Both Uber Eats and Deliveroo are testing out concepts as well. Where Grubhub stands apart slightly is with its focus on building virtual restaurants around specific diets and with food brands that aren’t necessarily restaurants. Expect that to be something we’ll see much more of from Grubhub in future.