Fresh, fast, healthy and affordable. These are the pillars of drive-thru concept Salad and Go, which opened its first Texas location in Plano last week.
On a daily basis, these priorities work hand-in-hand to deliver salads for under $6 in under a minute, CEO Joel Chrisman shared.
“Our mission is to be for everyone, not the few,” Chrisman said. “To continually keep prices low or drive them lower, our menu is made to order… [it’s] extremely efficient and affordable and craveable.”
The Plano location has already been well received since opening May 5 at 1400 Coit Road, according to Chrisman. The location also managed to go viral on TikTok through a video of a customer’s drive-thru experience, garnering close to 500,000 views during its first week of business.
Salad and Go’s menu offers 10 built-to-order salads with an included protein or tofu portion for $5.74 and the option to customize ingredients. Fan favorite salads are the Cobb and BBQ Ranch, Chrisman said. Other menu items include $2.99 breakfast burritos, $3.99 protein boxes and $1 cold-brew, iced teams and lemonades.
Plano found its way on to the top of the company’s list of ideal first store locations because of the focus placed on health and nutrition by residents, Chrisman said. This offers a similar customer base to Salad and Go’s original Arizona locations, and will hopefully encourage the continued growth of the company in North Texas, he said.
“I think there’s a lot of similar philosophies to Phoenix—it’s a young, healthy growing vibrant kind of community,” Chrisman said. “Plano was identified as a very specific market that we wanted to get into very early on.”
Salad and Go currently plans to open five more locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with locations expected to open in Richardson and Dallas this spring.
Plano’s freshly-opened location features a 700-square-feet building with two drive-thru lanes that merge into a one-lane pickup lane. The building houses anywhere from 3-to-8 employees at a time, working to man both the drive-thru and park and pick-up windows.
Along with its speedy and low-cost dining concept, Salad and Go has also brought to North Texas its practice of donating to charity. The company donated about 2,000 salads to the North Texas Food Bank in its first week in Plano, according to Chrisman.
“We were giving away salads before we even sold our first salad in Plano,” he said.
Deliveries to the food bank will continue weekly, and Salad and Go will continue to seek out donation opportunities in the area to expand its giving, he said.
“When we say for everyone, we want to make sure that you know in some cases, even if you can’t afford it, that you have access to that same healthy, nutritious food,” Chrisman said.
Salad and Go is open seven days a week until 9 p.m. For a full menu and other FAQs answered, visit www.saladandgo.com.
