London’s Make-to-order Salad Revolution

 
Will salad bars be the next big fast-food genre in UK cities? A new wave of entrepreneurs specialising in make-to-order salads has been finding a significant gap, not only because of the attention now focused on healthier eating – particularly the daily sustenance sought by office workers – but also because it is operationally very difficult for chains like Prêt A Manger, EAT and Starbucks to compete with them. The big brands all offer salad products but in a limited range of pre-packs. New players like Vital Ingredient, Salade, Tossed and Chop’d have a crucial differentiator: a counter service format geared to instant assembly of bespoke salads from 50-60-plus ingredients.
 

 
This concept, adapted from operations in New York and America’s West Coast, requires a highly disciplined approach to space planning, staff training, serving systems and hygiene. But in return, operators can attract loyal consumers seeking fresher, healthier lunches and prepared to spend a bit more than they would on a sandwich. Staff interaction with customers across a large, colourful counter display also encourages experimentation. “You never need to have the same lunch twice,” comments Alex Heynes, managing director of Vital Ingredient, which claimed London’s first make-to-order salad bar when it opened in Soho in 2001. It now has four units in prime spots around the capital, all dedicated 100% to make-to-order salads. “Every single salad is prepared to order in front of the customer,” Heynes affirms. “We just don’t believe you can pre-make a salad. They hate sitting around in plastic bowls on fridge shelves.” All salad ingredients are delivered fresh to each store and prepared in the on-site kitchen in small batches; the same goes for a big range of soups, made from scratch, plus juices, smoothies and breakfasts. “The key to our operation is interaction with well-trained counter staff,” Heynes points out. He admits that this is “very, very difficult” and took a long time to get right. “It is really labour intensive and highly skilled in comparison with normal catering outlets, and we are dealing with highly perishable ingredients which can deteriorate very quickly.” The key element in each store is a long - up to five metres – run of workstations to which customers go after picking up one of a range of salad bases held in transparent lidded bowls in a bank of refrigerated shelves. Meat, seafood, cheese and other ingredients, plus dressings and extra toppings, are added and mixed together by staff at the workstations. The final product costs typically from GBP4.95 to GBP6.
 

 
Vital Ingredient does not apply ingredient weighing (in contrast to Continental operators like Switzerland’s tibits, which is currently introducing two of its vegetarian restaurants – complete with trademark ‘salad boats’ – to London). “We prefer to employ a very simple pricing method and hope it all averages out at the end of the month,” Heynes says. Having the right system makes it relatively straightforward to keep ingredient choices interesting and regularly changing, according to Vincent McKevitt, founder of Tossed, which has established four units in central London since 2005 and has three more in the pipeline. McKevitt, who likes to be known as theSalad Man and has awarded himself a ‘Bachelor of Salad’ degree, sees the key challenge as bringing excitement to healthy eating. “We get 65% of our sales from salads but we position ourselves as ahealthy eating experience,” he says, pointing out that the salads promoted by the catering industry and fast-food chains like McDonald’s have not necessarily been better than other meals in terms of calories. Tossed features fat-free yoghurt and champagne raspberry dressing among its 15-strong choice of dressings to avoid the calories of mayonnaise. It also offers low GI (glucemic index) and high fibre options on bases, such as brown basmati rice. To avoid over-congestion during the noon-2 pm peak selling period, Tossed offers some pre-packs, but make-to-order is the USP. “We toss the salad together so the dressing comes in full contact with the leaves rather than just being drizzled over the top.”
 

 
| 13 November 2008 |