‘Salad and go’ is the only thing i miss about arizona
If a genie spun itself out of a bottle to me in this very moment and gave me three wishes, my first wish would be for the Bay Area to have a Salad and Go.
After leaving Phoenix for San Francisco two years ago, I can verify that most of these city dwellers are ultra health nuts. They do their run clubs and cycling sessions avidly. There is a tiny lot of tennis courts nearby my gym that is ALWAYS packed with pickle ball players, rain or shine. And most of all, they LOVE a good salad - and hell, me too.
But these people are so used to their $18+ Sweetgreen and Souvla, and don’t even get me started on Blue Barn. Yes, they are all delicious and filling, and yes, I’m sure many San Franciscans can regularly afford them since a lot of them work in tech, but MY GOD.
Why must you price gouge me over a bowl of leaves?
Blue Barn’s salad menu via Uber Eats.
Don’t piss me off.
If you don’t already know what that Salad and Go, you might be wondering what all the hype is about, aside the fact that I’ve already insinuated that it’s far more affordable than the aforementioned businesses (which it very much is).
And if that’s the case for you, dear reader, then I can assure you that it gets much better than just that.
I must warn you that I am a Salad and Go super fan. An extreme advocate, if you will. In my senior year of college, I focused my final web design project on redesigning the UX of the Salad and Go app (which admittedly no one really uses).
Feel free to click through and read this three year old case study lol
I interviewed users, observing their behaviors on the original app, prototyping a new interface on Figma, and wrote a final case study justifying all the design changes based on my research findings. After receiving an A+ on the project, I was bold enough to cold-email Salad and Go with my project deck, asking them to review it. They never responded, but I saw the CEO looked at my LinkedIn 2 months later. Weird.
Salad and Go? More like Salad and Ghosted!
And I was missing it so much in my first months living in the bay, I made a TikTok of it. It received a startlingly high number of 43 likes and 10 saves, mind you.
Anyway, for my financially responsible yet skeptical salad eaters, I’ll start with a direct price comparison. At Salad and Go, all salads are under $8 before tax. If you (for some silly reason) order via a third party like Uber Eats or Doordash, there is an additional $1 tacked onto the base price of all food items.
What’s even better is that you can turn all salads into a wrap for NO COST, and protein is INCLUDED (if you want it). This means you can get steak for no additional cost, the same way you can get chicken or tofu.
I visited my dad in AZ this past Christmas, and naturally I got Salad and Go five times in the one week I was there. Yes, the final price was $6.79 with steak. After tax it’s $7.29.
A full sized salad at Salad and Go is $7.29, which immediately blows all other competitors out of the water (to my knowledge).
I say that ordering S&G via third party apps is silly because - point #2 - all Salad and Go’s are strictly drive-thru and walk up only. Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense to get it from Doordash/Uber Eats/etc. when you can just drive there in typical fast food fashion (unless you live nowhere near to one or if you don’t have a car, but they are truly everywhere across Arizona).
Since there is absolutely no dine-in option, customer service is extremely streamlined. S&G is basically the same size as Dutch Bros, but instead of coffee, it’s salads (duh). But I can confidently say that the speed in which you’ll receive your meal is much faster compared to Dutch. Yes, their salads are most definitely pre-assembled, but the ingredients are always fresh. I personally have never spotted a wilted green or smelled something odd in my salad or wrap. The lettuce always has a decent crunch with no weird aftertaste, too. So far, so good.
Additionally, they also have drinks (all for $1.49), which range from cold brew coffee to tea to various types of lemonade. The seasonal soup is around a similar price range and rotates every few months. They also have a separate breakfast menu of various burritos! The burritos aren’t measly either; they’re definitely bigger than McDonald’s Sausage burrito. And they’re only $2.99 each!
The only catch is that the breakfast menu is strictly available until 10:30 AM on weekdays and 11 AM on weekends. So take caution, night owls - the early bird gets the burrito.
Some might call this an obsession, I say this is a love letter to the masses. Although Salad and Go is not a nationwide franchise (yet), this chain deserves all its flowers. Locations are only found in Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona at this time, but I hope that if any of you are based in any of these states, I hope you give it a shot.
In a time where striving for a balanced diet and lifestyle is unnecessarily expensive, this Salad and Go is a bastion of affordable healthy living.
