How One Company Focuses on Health, Accessibility, & Sustainability

Just Salad’s mission can be summed up by its straightforward tagline: “Healthy for Everyone.” In reality, though, making healthy, sustainable food available to all customers is a complicated and complex goal.

“Our mission is to be an everyday solution of affordable health and sustainability, and sometimes those goals run counter to each other,” founder and CEO Nick Kenner says. “We’ve been very creative in managing to keep most, if not all, items under $10, while also bringing forth a ton of sustainability and accessibility efforts. It’s not easy, but it’s also our secret sauce.”

In 2019’s fourth quarter, Just Salad rolled out one of its most futuristic of these efforts yet. Health Tribes is a virtual concept created by the salad chain in partnership with Grubhub. While it caters to those already within the zip code range of existent Just Salad brick-and-mortar, it works to widen the brand’s audience by providing nutritionist-approved options for diners with any allergy or dietary restriction.

Rather than add a plethora of allergy-friendly options to in-store salad, bowl, wrap, toast, soup, and smoothie offerings, Just Salad expanded its menu via Health Tribes, using existing kitchens to build the off-premises orders.

“Health Tribes came from the idea that we wanted to meet evolving dietary preferences for more customers. We