A View From The Top

Salad Collective CEO reveals 3 shareable resources to maximize multi-brand growth

Darden Coors discusses how she is growing MAD Greens, Snappy Salads and Tokyo Joe's by pooling marketing, operations and culinary resources.

September 19, 2024

The Colorado-based operating company, Salad Collective is behind three better-for-you brands MAD Greens, Snappy Salads and Tokyo Joe's. With consumer demand for nutritious, convenient and sustainable dining options on the rise, our commitment to culinary excellence, community engagement and operational efficiency has never been stronger.

As of this March, Salad Collective is now fully owned by AC Restaurant Co. — a Coors family ownership entity. This move has marked an exciting chapter of growth and connectivity for all the brands in our portfolio, solidifying our unified approach and shared values.

During my 11 years as the CEO of Salad Collective, I have been driven by a deep passion for the food and beverage industry. When I stepped into this role in 2013, after AC Restaurant Group acquired MAD Greens, in the first five years, I focused on growing our brand by expanding within our established home market of Colorado and then proving the concept in new markets in Texas and Arizona.

In 2019, our growth strategy began to focus on acquisitions, adding Snappy Salads and eventually Tokyo Joe's to our portfolio. We now have 60 company-owned locations between our three brands, and in this next five-year-plus phase, our focus is on growth through franchising, initially with expanding MAD Greens' footprint. We're leveraging our collective power and shared resources to stand out in the competitive fast casual sector.

1. Marketing

Leveraging shared resources is a crucial aspect of our approach to marketing planning and implementation across all Salad Collective brands. By prioritizing a unified branding strategy, we're able to maintain a consistent brand presence, while focusing on what makes each concept unique.

As a multi-brand company, we benefit from trial and implementation across our brands, maximizing our efforts and improving the effectiveness of our marketing initiatives that focus on brand awareness, customer acquisition and franchise growth.

Along with our internal marketing strategies, we prioritize brand loyalty initiatives that have proven to solidify consumer relationships and reach segmented audiences. We produce localized marketing plans tailored to each brand's specific audience and market while also leveraging systemwide initiatives. We believe that it's crucial to incorporate all aspects of the marketing mix, like PR, social media and advertising, to support the brands.

The shared resources across Salad Collective allow us to be efficient and strategic in our marketing efforts, ensuring that each brand benefits from the collective knowledge and resources of our team members.

2. Operations and supply

One of the greatest advantages of our unified approach has been the ability to streamline operations and optimize supply through innovation and cost reduction. At MAD Greens, we boast our state-of-the-art technology and partnerships with loyalty, engagement, ordering and delivery platforms, ensuring a seamless system across our restaurants. We have also tested out the new and innovative third-party drone delivery service, FlyBy Robotics, in our AZ market to address the growing interest in online ordering and the stickiness of delivery. The drone delivery test made it apparent that third-party delivery is a priority to our consumers, which is why a dedicated delivery pick-up area was brought to the forefront of our new restaurant design. Third-party ordering continues to be a significant part of our operations at MAD Greens as is our commitment to constantly improve our processes.

In addition to our focus on operational efficiency, we've incorporated strategies to increase our scalability cost-effectively. Our national vendor partnerships that remain consistent throughout Salad Collective offer attractive ingredient pricing without the need to navigate multiple suppliers for each brand. Since each concept uses similar fresh ingredients, we can be creative in how we use them for each brand while still reaching varied markets. For instance, Snappy Salads and MAD Greens recently tested cross-brand limited-time menu items in several markets, ultimately taking advantage of those shared resources and expanding their customer reach.

3. Culinary development

For our team, staying ahead of trends and constantly evolving can be attributed to our commitment to creative culinary innovation. Recently, we've added new Handheld Sandwiches to the Snappy Salads menu, introducing sandwiches to the salad-forward menu for the first time. The new sandwiches have been a hit with our loyal fans and provide a whole new category for building catering sales. We're constantly evolving to the ever-changing landscape of the fast casual and healthy eating sector.

Leading our dedication to these innovative culinary solutions is Jeffrey DiSanto, famously coined "Chef Jeff." With his recent appointment as the director of Culinary at Salad Collective, DiSanto oversees culinary innovation and menu development for all 60 Salad Collective locations with extensive knowledge of each brand and their unique flavor profiles and combinations. It's been invaluable to have culinary leadership across all brands who has the creative lens to support our made-to-order and customizable menus.

Utilizing the resources we already have across all brands streamlines the entire menu development process, while also facilitating cross-menu development. By using the collective insights from our team members and resources from our brands, we can maintain the high-quality and innovative menu items that our consumers know and love.