News that the drive-thru Salad and Go chain plans to close its remaining units in Texas and Oklahoma earlier this month prompted much speculation about what went wrong.
Among the most vocal commentators? Tony and Roushan Christofellis, the couple who founded Salad and Go in 2013.
In a Facebook post last week, the Christofellises said they have been asked repeatedly for their take on Salad and Go’s latest moves. So they wrote an essay, explaining the red flags they saw years ago and what prompted them to exit the company.
Tony Christofellis then, in an interview with Restaurant Business, offered more detail. He predicted that Salad and Go would eventually fail, and that the new brand his family now operates, Angie’s Food Concepts, will likely take over the 70 Salad and Go locations in Arizona and Nevada that will remain after the closures.
“There’s no way we both co-exist in the same market,” he said. “Either we go out of business, or they [do]. And I just don’t think we’re going to go out of business because we have something that is better for the consumer, and for our team members and for the world.”
Salad and Go history
The Christofellises first launched Salad and Go in Phoenix in 2013. At the time, their mission was to “make drive-thru fast food better and healthier,” wrote Roushan. The goal was “to democratize better and healthier food for all the hard-working Americans, not just those that can afford it.”
In the early days, the concept was bootstrapped, they said. Roushan cashed out a teaching retirement account and they sold their house to open the first drive-thru location.
At the time, there were skeptics who doubted that consumers would want a drive-thru salad, they said. Some questioned whether it was possible to offer a quality salad, given the high cost of organic and premium ingredients and the low price point that Salad and Go was going for.
“We were lean, mean and driven to make the model work and prove everyone wrong,” they wrote.
It turned out consumers did want what Salad and Go offered. But the chain needed funding to grow.
So, in 2016, they partnered with private equity fund Volt Investment Holdings, which Roushan said “believed in our craziness,” and even supported the mission to keep prices low.
That funding allowed for more growth, as well as the creation of a central distribution center, and the purchase of trucks to source directly from farms. Vertical integration is a key factor in making the concept work.
When COVID hit, Salad and Go was in a good position, with its low-contact model. There were no dining rooms to shutter.
But Volt started to feel the urgency of “super-fast” growth into new markets, like Dallas, “more quickly than we thought was right,” the Christofellises wrote.
“We felt we still had more work to do here in Phoenix, strengthening our vertical integration and operational efficiencies to make the model work, without making sacrifices in the name of growth,” the post said. “Ultimately we did not see eye to eye with the private equity investors on business and growth strategy and we stepped down, exiting completely from Salad and Go by 2021.”
Volt then pushed big into Texas, opening more than 60 units in the states with a few years.
Tony said Texas is a tough market, and many brands have struggled to get a foothold there. It's big, and brand awareness is a challenge, he said. For Salad and Go, frequency began to decline there, despite the rapid growth.
The launch of Angie's Lobster
Meanwhile, when Christofellis’ mother, Angie, passed away from pancreatic cancer, Tony wanted to honor her. Originally from Boston, Tony wanted to create a seafood concept and set out to “democratize” Maine lobster, to make it more accessible by buying direct from a wharf and lobster processing facility in Maine.
That led to the launch of Angie’s Lobster in 2022, offering lobster rolls in Arizona for the shockingly low price of $9.99.
But lobster alone wasn’t enough and that brand evolved as it grew. Tony started testing other variations of the concept, like Angie’s Prime Grill, which he describes as “Salad and Go meets Chipotle,” with salads, warm bowls and burritos, as well as recent innovations like a Crunchwrap-like offering called the Crunch#!@$ (or “Crunch Bleep,” when said out loud), described as a healthier version of the Taco Bell original.
The Christofellises also tested a burger concept (Angie’s Burger) and a chicken concept (Angie’s Chicken). Now the company has 21 locations, mostly in Arizona, which will be operated under two brands: Angie’s, which will include all of the menus, with salads, warm bowls, burgers, chicken and lobster; and Angie’s Prime Grill, which will focus on the salads, warm bowls and burritos.
Going forward, Angie's units will serve salads, bowls, burgers, chicken and lobster rolls. | Photo courtesy of Angie's Food Concepts.
Like Salad and Go, the Angie’s brands are moving into Texas, with one unit open in Plano, and two more coming before the end of the year, Tony said. (He’d like to pick up the closed Salad and Go locations there, but Tony said coffee chains were scooping up the drive-thru units and he wasn’t sure Salad and Go would negotiate with Angie’s.)
Angie’s also has a location in Nevada, with the first unit opening in Maine this year (near the lobster processing facility), and more planned in Arizona. He expects to add 16 or 17 locations in 2026. Angie’s does not franchise.
Higher prices, lower quality
Meanwhile, in the Facebook post, the Christofellises said they couldn’t help but watch Salad and Go from a distance, saying “all the things we feared would happen, were happening.”
Among the problems they saw: a decline in food quality, with a move away from organics. Proteins were outsourced and sometimes cooked weeks before being served.
“They increased the shelf life of centrally prepped ingredients,” they wrote. “They added preservatives and additives to their dressings. They coated their romaine with a preservative to make it last longer.”
Salad and Go also raised its prices (though that was true about most restaurant chains after the pandemic). Salads went from $5.74 to $7.75, they wrote, and drinks increased from $1 to $1.75.
Salad and Go did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“With all of these changes making what we loved to eat every day now unrecognizable to us, we saw a big void open once again,” said the Christofellises in the post. “Almost, like it was before we started Salad and Go. To us, Salad and Go no longer existed.”
Now, Tony argues that Angie’s brands will continue to fill that gap, making “luxury foods affordable,” and fundamentally stealing Salad and Go’s market share.
“Salad and Go is the Blackberry. Angie’s is the iPhone,” he said.
The Angie’s brands are somewhat more complex, operationally. There’s a lot more fresh cooking in units, for example, and Tony said they are working on improving speed. Salad and Go’s window times at the drive thru are faster, he admits.
But Angie’s has variety. Kids today want chicken sandwiches and burgers, he said. So families can come to an Angie’s and everyone gets what they want: Mom gets a salad, dad gets a burrito, grandpa gets a lobster roll and the kids get fried chicken sandwiches—all for an average of about $11, said Tony.
“We’re really the 'everything' fast food restaurant,” he said. “But it’s health forward.”
And Tony said the company now knows better what mistakes not to make.
Angie’s will not compromise on the quality of ingredients, for example, he said. Growth will be slower. And, if the Christofellis do end up looking for institutional funding again, they’ll know better what terms to dictate.
Salad and Go is still profitable in Arizona, Tony said, doing what he estimates is about $1.7 million per store. But Angie’s averages about $2 million in unit volume there.
The Christofellis family has put about $35 million into building the infrastructure for Angie’s. It’s still evolving, Tony said, but so far, so good.
“We’ll see what happens two years from now,” he said. Salad and Go “is just getting disrupted by a superior competitor, which is us.”
UPDATE: This article has been updated to reflect the Salad and Go closures will be in Texas and Oklahoma.