Why even a supermodel couldn’t sell the salad bar today
The trick will be convincing middle America that salad is cool again. Salad consumption has declined steadily since the fitness-crazed 1980s, when model Elle MacPherson touted Burger King salad bars and Richard Simmons pitched spray-bottle dressing. Only 4.8 percent of restaurant lunches include a main-dish salad, about half as many as in 1989, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.
“We really had to change people’s perceptions of what a salad could be” when Chop’t opened its doors 12 years ago and “recruited” diners with a dish featuring steak, fried onions and blue cheese, Marsh said in an interview. “In the immediate future, Chop’t has the opportunity to be in a lot more places.”
While diners on the coasts have embraced Salad 2.0, NPD research shows that many Americans prefer sandwiches and are more likely to grab chips or other bagged snacks than a side salad. Despite grocery aisles stacked with handy, pre-washed boxes of arugula and baby spinach, home consumption of salad is barely growing, according to NPD. Boomers are eating more indulgent foods as they age, and millennials prefer such trendy fare as sautéed kale and juiced greens.
What was appetizing for boomers became tacky for their millennial kids. Wendy’s pulled the plug on Garden Spot in 2006. Fresh Choice, a chain of all-you-can-eat salad restaurants on the West Coast, shut down about two years ago.
Generation Y is “looking for contemporary décor, atmosphere and ambiance combined with quality ingredients,” said Darren Tristano, an analyst Technomic Inc. in Chicago. What’s more, each generation defines health differently. In the 1980s, the focus was on avoiding harmful substances; today it’s on adding healthy ingredients, Balzer said.
Making salads cool again now falls to a new generation of restaurants like Sweetgreen, Fresh & Co. or Chop’t, where young professionals wait in line for a quick and healthy meal. The salads are prepared by counter staff -- no customers labouring under a sneeze guard here -- and there are typically other options such as wheat pasta and grilled vegetables.
Chop’t tries hard to live up to its billing as the “creative salad company.” Its Modern Asia concoction features “edamame, pickled broccoli and carrot slaw, crispy Chinese noodles and slivered almonds with spinach and romaine lettuce.” The salads are diced with a two-handled mezzaluna knife, giving a more uniform flavour to each bite.
Chop’t is riding a consumer stampede toward fast-casual restaurants, typified by Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (CMG) They tend to be more upscale and focused on fresh ingredients than fast-food places, though they lack a wait staff. Full-service restaurants, focused on salads or not, are suffering.
Fast-casual restaurants are outpacing fast-food joints and will account for 15 percent of the U.S. industry within 30 years, up from 4 percent now, according to Sanford C. Bernstein.
Still, traditional fast-food chains remain dominant in much of the country, and leafy greens don’t fare well there. Salads make no more than 3 percent of McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) U.S. sales, Chief Executive Officer Donald Thompson said last year.
Southwest Salad
Often cost is the issue, Saleh said. A McDonald’s Southwest salad with chicken is more than $4, compared with less than $2 for a double cheeseburger. Fast-food customers are typically lower-income, Saleh said. “They have a lot of sensitivity to price change.”
Food trends tend to start on the coast and head inward so salad chains in New York or California could eventually reach the rest of the country. First, though, many diners will have to get past lingering perceptions of salad as diet food.
Source: bloomberg.com
